Ethnological Textile Collections at ASM
Details and History

A Navajo weaver in Leup, AZ, c. 1907. From the ASM collections, photographer unknown.

Arizona State Museum holds more than 3500 textiles that document the lifeways and art of historic and living peoples worldwide. Most date from 1800 to the present. They represent a valuable resource for research, exhibitions and special programs, while comprising but a small portion (3%) of the museum’s overall holdings.

Scholars at Arizona State Museum consider both the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico as one expansive culture area. This territory spans roughly from Las Vegas, Nevada in the west to Las Vegas, New Mexico in the east, and from Durango, Colorado in the north to the state of Durango, Mexico in the south. The Mexican portion of this area has sometimes been referred to as “The Other Southwest” (Fontana, Faubert and Burns 1977).

Navajo Second Phase Women’s Blanket Design Rug, c. 1885-1900. Gift of Katherine Mcewen, 1943. ASM Cat. No. E-1643

Approximately one-half of the ethnographic textiles come from this region—650 handworked fabrics from the southwestern United States and another 550 from adjacent regions of northwestern Mexico. Those from the U.S. represent Puebloan (Acoma, Hopi, Laguna, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblos), Navajo, Apache, Yuman, Southern Paiute, Pai, and Lower Colorado Yuman Indian peoples as well as Spanish-American settlers. Those from Mexico originate primarily from the northwestern states of Sonora and Chihuahua. The material culture of Yaqui and Piman (Tohono and Akimel O’odham and Pima Bajo) peoples comes from both sides of the international border.

Navajo Two Grey Hills/Toadlena style rug. c. 1960, 166.5 cm x 139 cm. Handspun wool. Gift of Steve Larrabee, from the Estate of George and Frances Butler, 2010. ASM Cat. No. 2010-19-1

Information and images concerning the museum’s 600-plus Pueblo, Navajo and Spanish-American textiles will soon be available through the online ASM Southwest Textile Collection Database. The Pueblo collection includes most of the major garment types—mantas, dresses, wearing blankets, shirts, kilts, leggings, vests, sashes and belts. The Navajo textiles also encompass most major textile types of this cultural group—wearing blankets, sarapes, small blankets, dresses, mantas, saddle blankets, one saddle cinch, belts, pillow covers, runners, rugs, and wall hangings. Pieces range from the Classic period (1800–1865), through the Late Classic (1865–1880), Transitional (1880–1895) and Rug (1895–1950) periods, to the Modern (1950–2000) and most recent times. Plain, twill, double-faced, and tufted weaves can be studied. Styles range from striped and early terraced designs derived from earlier Pueblo and Navajo basketry, through spectacular eye dazzlers influenced by Mexican Saltillo sarapes, pictorials (some with delightful native humor), and an array of regional rug designs such as Two Grey Hills, Ganado, Crystal, and Teec Nos Pos.

Other collections are not represented in the Southwest Textile Collection Database but are equally notable. Through field collecting efforts during the 1970s and 1980s, the museum holds an extensive assemblage of well-documented textiles from northwestern Mexico. Handwoven wool blankets, skirts and sashes, and hand-sewn and embroidered cotton garments characterize the creative and sometimes quirky artistic production of the Tarahumara, Warihio, Pima Bajo, Tepehuan and Mayo Indians.

Sierra Ornelas at the 2005 Southwest Indian Art Fair. The weaving on the loom is now in the ASM collection.

Photo by Ann Lane Hedlund

Although the main focus is the American Southwest and northern Mexico, the ethnological textile collections encompass material from all over the world. University of Arizona professors have contributed field collections, such as the textiles and other materials that anthropologist Edward Dozier brought back from the Philippines in the 1960s. Arizona State Museum curator Wilma Kaemlein collected over 30 Guatemalan fabrics in the field during the 1970s, lending a more modern component to earlier donations of 80-plus costumes and blankets from the same culture area.

In 1979, the University of Arizona Foundation provided funds to purchase a large portion of the Donald and Dorothy Cordry collection of Mexican Indian costumes. Numbering over 500 items, the Cordry collection dates from the 1930s to the 1960s and includes rare shellfish-dyed purple and cochineal red skirts, fine gauze huipiles, and leather and bark clothing from Chiapas. Some of these costumes can be found online in our web exhibit What Would Frida Wear?

Asian textiles number over 150 and include Chinese and Japanese kimonos and other embroidered silk clothing, gifts to the museum from a number of donors. Polynesian tapa cloths, Bolivian woolen costumes and Peruvian carrying cloths are just some of the other ethnographic textiles at the museum.

Textiles have always held a special place in the museum’s collections and programs. Curators at the museum openly invite scholars, students, artists, native people, and other specialists to incorporate objects from these collections into their research projects and publications.

References

More on Textiles: Glossary | Time Periods | Readings