Navajo Weavings with Ceremonial Themes: A Historical Overview of a Secular Art Form, Rebecca M. Valette and Jean-Paul Valette

This book invite the reader into one of the most fascinating intersections of sacred imagery and textile art in the Southwest. Rather than simple decorative cloth, these weavings — Yei, Yeibichai, and sandpainting textiles — are evidence of deep cultural dialogue: born from Navajo weaving traditions yet influenced by Anglo traders’ demand for “ceremonial” symbolism. Through over 500 photographs and detailed maps, the authors position these textiles as living artefacts, showing how motifs drawn from Navajo spiritual life evolved into sought-after art objects with their own history, circulation and aesthetic development.

The story the book tells is not static; it is a narrative of innovation and negotiation. Beginning with the genre’s emergence around 1900, when these designs were first woven at the instigation of traders, the volume traces a period of intense creativity from 1920–1940 and into contemporary practice. For the textile-minded, the pages allow slow-looking at colour, line, symbol and structure — not merely to admire surface patterning but to understand the socio-artistic forces that shaped them. It challenges easy assumptions about “ceremonial” meaning, showing how weavings once perceived as sacred were in fact secular commissions that became iconic embodiments of Navajo design excellence.

About the Author
Rebecca M. Valette and Jean-Paul Valette are researchers and curators whose work over the past four decades has focused on Navajo weaving and Native American textile history. Their scholarship includes curating exhibitions and publishing studies on Navajo ceremonial-imagery textiles — works that have been prized by collectors yet rarely studied in depth before this book. Through meticulous documentation and annotation, they bring both academic rigour and an appreciation for the weavers’ creative agency to their subject.

Publication date: 2017
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
Pages: 432
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780764353741

Dimensions: 22.23 x 5.08 x 27.94 cm