One Hundred Years of Navajo Rugs

This history of Navajo weaving is a revised, expanded, and updated version of Marian Rodee's 1981 classic Old Navajo Rugs: Their Development from 1900 to 1940. Designed for the general reader, museum goer, or collector, it offers a guide to identifying and dating rugs by means of weaving materials. Wool quality, the author explains, is the single most important clue to the date of a rug's manufacture. Rodee also provides historical background on the great Navajo weavers and especially on the traders who bought rugs from the Navajo--Cotton, Moore, Hubbell, Bloomfield, McSparron, and others--all of whom had some influence on the development of the craft and patterns of Navajo weaving.

Since the first edition of this book, more information about more collections of rugs has become available, and this new edition includes a greatly expanded section of color plates in addition to sixty-four black-and-white photographs. Rodee has also added a map of the Navajo Nation showing the location of trading posts and outlet stores.

For anyone who enjoys looking at Navajo rugs, and especially for those considering buying them, this book is an indispensable and informative guide.

Marian Rodee was curator of southwestern ethnology at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She is retired and is now a research associate at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe.