The Wide Ruins style is the most elaborate and usually themost finely woven of the banded rug styles. It evolved from the Chinle. These rugs will have broad strips of plain color, some with geometric designs and with verynarrow bands with delicate motifs, combined with thin, straight lines ofcontrasting colors. The shapes found within the broader bands are oftenoutlined with a different color. The main colors are browns, olives, maroons, and mustardsaccented with a color such as white, red, or black.
native american wool rugsOlder rugs could have been cleaned and may have developed other odors. It is quite funny to watch potential buyers go through an inventory of rugs and then inspect them. It is important to be able distinguish wool from other materials. Although there are better ways to test wool, these methods are often not applicable when purchasing a rug at a retail store or Indian arts dealer.
Another way to check the authenticity of the Navajo rug is to look for lazy lines. Lazy lines appear as a diagonal line in the weave of the fabric. During the weaving process, the rug maker would move to work on adjacent sections of the warp, resulting in the subtle diagonal lines referred to as lazy lines. These lines would be almost impossible to detect by looking at a photograph of the rug online.
Weavers also found that the market for their blankets was changing rapidly. The trading post system and its ties to the railroad brought relatively cheap manufactured clothing and supplies to the Navajo and surrounding tribes. Anglo-style coats and dresses were replacing wearing blankets as the clothing of choice among Native peoples. During the last two decades of the 19th century, most Navajo blankets were woven of spongy, loosely spun yarns most frequently dyed with aniline reds, oranges and yellows. Banded Blankets made with simple stripes of contrasting color were descendents of the earliest Navajo weavings.
These rugs are made using handlooms that are manually operated.In the past, weavers would set up their looms among two trees. They now use poles to weave on their looms. To create a perfect base pattern, the weavers will overlap the threads several times and then add layers of different designs. These rugs are often distinguished by the presence of black and white stripes.The Navajo rugs are distinguished from other types of rugs by the way they have their wool and fabric. For their rugs, the Navajos used high-quality, hand-spun wool made from their sheep. They also used Saxony yarn, which was silky and naturally colored.These rugs were made from all-natural materials, which allowed for the high quality Navajo rugs.
Hubbell’s home and base of operation were at Ganado, Arizona about 50 miles south of Canyon de Chelly. His tastes ran to Classic Period weavings and many of the early rugs made by Ganado area weavers were close enough in appearance to classic mantas and serapes to have earned the generic name, Hubbell Revival rugs. Hubbell guided his weavers by displaying paintings of rug patterns he favored. Many of these paintings can still be seen at the original trading post, now preserved and operated as a National Historic Site. By the 1930s, Ganado area weavers had thoroughly adopted the color scheme, but had moved away from Classic-inspired weavings to new patterns with a large central motif-often a complicated diamond or lozenge shape-with a double or triple geometric border.
The Bisti Navajo rug is the rarest of these Regional rugs, which are often made with more than nine borders. Many Bisti rugs have a thin checkered border. They display definite Oriental influences. Bisti rugs originated in the 1890s at a trading post southwest of Two Grey Hills. In 1896, J.B. Moore purchased the trading post and renamed it, Crystal, after a mountain spring of pure sparkling water.