Blankets | History

Rio Grande style weaving refers to the weaving tradition of the people of the middle and upper Rio Grande valleys in New Mexico and Southern Colorado from the time that Spanish speaking settlers arrived until about 1900, when locally woven goods were replaced by factory cloth and ready-made garments. It was the result of the literal interweaving of the Spanish, Mexican native, and the local Indian pueblo weaving cultures in a very isolated Northern New Mexico. Hopi, Ute, and Navajo cultures also contributed through commerce and intermarriage with the pueblos of the Rio Grande, but also because of an active slave trade that provided many laborers to the craft of weaving along the Rio Grande. Rio Grande weaving follows the European format: carded wool, spun on a wheel, woven on a treadle loom that uses two or more harnesses. Overall design, and use of motifs is very much a mixture of all the cultures involved, with noticeable European and Spanish tastes in the mix.

Navajo weaving by contrast, after 1650 when Churros (now Navajo-Churro) arrived in Navajo country, is still done in the traditional pueblo Indian style: Carded wool (the pueblos used cotton before the Europeans came) spun with a drop spindle, woven on an upright tapestry loom, the shed formed with battens instead of harnesses. It has been suggested that the Navajo learned weaving in this manner through intermarriage with pueblo people from along the Rio Grande. Here again we can see all the cultures reflected in design, and Navajo weavers definitely used what they liked in Rio Grande and Hopi weaving, but the strong Navajo culture has left its mark clearly on Navajo weaving.

Rio Grande weavers produced several types of cloth, from sacking to carpeting, but the signature pieces are the blankets. Varying in size from saddle blanket to wearing blanket, woven tightly in Churro wool, and decorated mostly with wide stripes, but occasionally with tapestry designs, these blankets were clearly treasured household possessions (especially on a cold night in Taos.) This and the fact that they are sturdy, durable textiles contributed to the survival of a handful of them to the present day. Many Rio Grande blankets follow a five-banded format, and are known as five-banded Rio Grande blankets. The general layout is five bands consisting of stripes and/or tapestry work against a background that is plain or worked in uniform striping that is often alternating blue and black (known as banded background, five banded Rio Grande blankets.).