Other Navajo Weavings — Crystal, Pictorials, Saddle Blankets & Specialty Styles

Navajo weaving is one of the most varied and inventive textile traditions in the world — and not every exceptional piece fits neatly into a named regional style. This collection gathers the weavings that fall outside The Gordon Collection's dedicated style pages: Crystal and modern Crystal weavings, Navajo pictorials, saddle blankets, Red Mesa, Tree of Life, optical and geometric pieces, and other distinctive works that represent the full creative range of the Navajo weaving tradition.

Crystal weavings carry the direct legacy of trader J.B. Moore, whose 1903 and 1911 mail-order catalogues first opened the eastern US market to Navajo textiles. Early Crystal rugs — characterized by bordered geometric designs in natural browns, creamy whites, and flashes of aniline red — are among the most historically significant collector pieces from the early rug period. Modern Crystal weavings, developed from the 1940s onward, evolved into borderless banded designs in soft vegetal colors with distinctive wavy-line motifs, equally prized for their subtlety and refined palette.

Navajo pictorials represent the weaver's most direct personal expression — images drawn from daily life, the natural world, and Navajo cultural experience woven into textiles without pattern or blueprint. Tree of Life weavings, featuring a central cornstalk with birds perched in the leaves, are among the most recognized and collected pictorial forms. Landscape pictorials, bird pictorials, and figurative works capturing scenes of reservation life all appear in this category, each piece entirely unique to the weaver who created it.

Navajo saddle blankets — both single (approximately 30 inches square) and double (twice the length, folded over the horse's back) — represent the utilitarian tradition at its most refined. The finest examples, particularly early pieces from the Classic and Transitional periods, are tightly woven, richly patterned, and highly collectible precisely because they were made to be used rather than displayed.

Red Mesa, Optical, and other geometric styles round out a collection that defies easy categorization — which is exactly the point. The Gordon Collection has spent over 50 years acquiring exceptional Navajo weavings of every style and period, and some of the most remarkable pieces in our inventory are those that stand apart from the regional canon entirely. Our Telluride gallery holds considerably more inventory than what appears online — contact us directly for photographs, condition details, and current availability across all specialty styles.