Textiles
The Navajo and Pueblo textile and clothing collections are the largest and most comprehensive in the world. They include more than 1,000 pieces and span three centuries.
The Navajo textile collection is especially strong in the quality and number of mid to late nineteenth-century blankets and dresses, other items of clothing, and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century floor rugs. It includes such styles as Crystal, Ganado, Teec Nos Pos, Two Grey Hills, Wide Ruins, and many others. The Pueblo collection consists of embroidered mantas and dresses, kilts, shirts, breechcloths, woven belts, leggings, and sashes.
For more information on textiles, you may want to visit the SAR Press to view or purchase publications such as:
Spanish-American Blanketry
1987. H.P. Mera; with an introduction by Kate Peck Kent
In 1984, while studying textiles in the collections of the School of American Research, Kate Peck Kent discovered a manuscript on Spanish-American weaving by the late H.P. Mera, curator of archaeology at Santa Fe’s Lab of Anthropology. This forgotten manuscript describes the origin and history of the distinctive textiles woven by Spanish-Americans in New Mexico.
To learn more about Pueblo Indian embroidery, visit We Dance with Them: Pueblo Indian Embroidery in our Online Exhibition section of the website.
Diné (Navajo) Textiles, rolled for storage in IARC’s storage vaults. Photograph by Addison Doty.