Chinle, Wide Ruins & Pine Springs Navajo Rugs — Vegetal Dye Banded Weavings of the Revival Era

Of all the regional Navajo weaving traditions, Chinle, Wide Ruins, and Pine Springs occupy a unique place — born not from ancient practice but from a deliberate 20th-century revival, and yet among the most visually sophisticated and collectible weavings in the entire tradition. The Gordon Collection has carried exceptional examples of all three since 1973, and our understanding of each style's distinct lineage runs deep.

The roots of this tradition reach back to the earliest Navajo textiles, which were horizontal and banded — designs confined to linear sections running the width of the weaving, in the natural undyed colors of the sheep. Over the 19th century those bands grew more complex, designs broke through them, and aniline dyes flooded the palette. By the 1920s, a countermovement had begun. Mary Cabot Wheelwright — the Boston philanthropist who would later found the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe — partnered with Chinle trader Cozy McSparron to push back. Displeased with harsh synthetic colors and derivative designs, Wheelwright supplied McSparron's weavers with specially developed vegetal dyes and sketches of early banded textiles, sparking what became known as the Chinle Revival. The resulting Chinle style — clean horizontal banding, soft plant-derived colors in gold, terra cotta, brown and tan, with geometric motifs contained within the bands — was something genuinely new built from something genuinely old.

The Wide Ruins and Pine Springs styles grew directly from that seed. Sallie and Bill Lippincott — anthropologists who had befriended McSparron while Bill served as a ranger at Canyon de Chelly — eventually purchased the trading post at Wide Ruins, south of Ganado, and applied the Chinle philosophy with even greater ambition. Under Sallie Lippincott's direction, Wide Ruins weavers began spinning their yarns finer, expanding the vegetal dye palette into soft mauves, pinks, pale purples, sage greens and lilacs, and developing the more intricate banded patterns the Wide Ruins style is celebrated for today. Pine Springs, the neighboring region, developed its own variation — favoring cooler greens over the warmer pinks of Wide Ruins, and equally prized by collectors who know the difference.

These weavings appeal on two levels simultaneously: to the serious collector drawn to their documented revival history, named-era provenance, and technical refinement; and to the design-minded buyer who recognizes that a Wide Ruins or Chinle rug brings a palette — warm desert earth tones, organic and plant-derived — that no synthetic textile can replicate. The Gordon Collection carries vintage and contemporary examples across all three styles. Contact our Telluride gallery for pieces beyond what appears online, including Lippincott-era Wide Ruins weavings and early Chinle Revival pieces.