Gallup is what I imagine a stereotypical western town to be. The main drag is along the rail line and the old shopping district only extends a few streets behind that. The residential parts of town are built up on the hill behind over looking the downtown, rail line and wide open spaces beyond. Ana and I had a rather bad introduction to the place when we arrived on sunday night and descended the train into a torrential downpour. It was much better to see it on a bright sunny saturday with a group of pleasant female companions who were all armed with credit cards. And what a place to shop!!! You could do some serious damage in this town.
Our first stop was Richardson's trading post which is right downtown on the main drag. They have such a big shop it seems like it takes up the whole block but really it is just four large storefronts. When you walk in the array of glass jewelry cases takes your breath away. Mary who is on good terms with the establishment here maneuvered us all behind the counter and into the principle rug room where we were met by an elegant soft spoken gentleman named Larry Fulbright. He is in charge of the rugs at Richardsons and after introducing himself he pretty much told us we could take our time look at anything we wanted and just come find him if we had any questions.
I didn't take any pictures of the main rug room. I think I was too dazzled to think of the camera. It is a huge room with large pallets in the middle of the room stacked with rugs and also along the walls rugs were hanging and folded in stacks according to the style. Mary took us through each of the styles explaining which part of the reservation they came from and pointing out each one's unique stylistic features. When we came to the pictoral rugs. Mary pulled one out and crossed the room to a wall where they had glued long strips of velcro and she put the rug up onto the velcro where it stayed while we looked at it. It was a beautiful night scene with stars in the sky and some sort of large ceremony going on with lots of figures. It was beautiful. We did all this standing behind a life size taxodermically preserved white buffalo!
Next we got stuck into the pallets in the middle of the floor that had lots of historic weavings. Mary explained to us how you could date rugs by looking closely at the materials, type of wool, whether it was handspun or plyed commercial yarns and also by what sort of dyes were employed. We also got stuck into counting numbers of warp threads and weft threads. The most exciting thing we found in one of the piles was an old rug with a spider hole in it. The unknowledgeable could be forgiven for thinking it was a large moth hole in the weaving but if you looked at it closely you could see that it had been specifically woven in by the weaver. Different stories to explain why. I think it is called a spider hole because it was put there for the spirit of spider woman to crawl out and it is also symbolic of the people climbing from one world into the next which is part of their creation stories. We also found spirit lines in the weavings. These are thought to allow the creative spirit of the weaver to escape one rug and move onto the next rug.
We walked on into the second room that had all of the really huge rugs hanging from the ceiling and lots of interesting western artifacts including an entire wagon.
I was fascinated with this wall that was covered by saddles sitting on pegs which extended out from the wall. Mary said that many people pay to store their saddles here for safe keeping between mustering seasons. I suppose that a good saddle might also be pawned when a cowpoke was between jobs and down on his luck.
Here is the wagonthat was loaded with interesting furs, bear, mountain lion, zebra and goodness knows what else. This is obviously the place to come if you need exotic items to decorate your mountain lodge!
On the way out I spied this white buffalo head above the old pawn display area. Isn't he a beauty? No wonder the indians thought they were powerful medicine.
I took this photo because I like the colors and simple block pattern in this rug. At the time I didn't even notcie the small statue and replica pueblo in the foreground.
After what seemed like hours we drove over to our next stop which was Perry Nulls Trading Post. Here is a picture of the rug area. Barry and Michelle treated us so well here. I think they knew they were going to sell us a lot of stuff so in the end they gave up trying to herd us out of the rug area which happened to be behind all the jewelry cases. They finally just told us to go for it and we had to flag them down when we were ready to make our final purchases.
This was a beautiful rug that Patricia fell in love with. At first glance I thought it was some kind of unusual wide ruin rug but it was done in dark greens and reds which was unusual. Mary told us that this color scheme was typical of the Pine Springs area.
Very old pictorial, ceremonial rug. Even if you could afford it, where would you hang it? Nonetheless, this one was one of my favorites.
Two of our group pouring over a jewelry case. Rugs were soon forgotten and left behind for the allure of colorful bobbles. Barry gave us an indepth lecture and showed us examples of fake turquoise versus the real thing and then showed us examples of how much the turquoise varies from mine to mine. I got scared that my earrings were fakes but he had a look at them and told me he knew the lady that made them and she would never use fake turquoise. I was so happy about that.
Meanwhile behind us there was a lot of traffic in and out of Navajos pawning large ceremonial pieces. Mary explained to us that there is an entire economy built on pawned jewelry. When people are hard up they pawn their pieces. If they need them for a ceremony they go and get them out on some collateral. Meanwhile they get their government checks cashed at places like Perry Nulls and they make their down payments on their pawned pieces. It is fascinating. Back in the late 60's or early 70's the Navajo Nation decided to ban the practice on the reservation. This was bad luck for the traders of posts on the reservation but in places like Gallup which are off the reservation you see that the practice continues as much as ever.
Ana bought a beautiful necklace here at Perry Nulls. It is a very modern piece of inlayed stone with different hinged pieces so that it fits closely against the nape of the neck. I came away with a very modest turquoise bug pin. It looks like a beatle about to take flight. We did so much damage there as a group that Barry followed us out to the car park and stood on the verandah waving goodbye to us with a big smile on his face and telling us to come back again some day.
All this shopping made us all very hungry so Mary drove us over to Earl's Place. You could tell this restaurant was going to be good because the car park was jammed. Both walkways on either side of the restaurant were also jammed with Navajo's selling their wares from card tables. When we got into the restaurant we felt looking around that we were obviously the minority here as most patrons were Navajo. After we were seated the merchants started arriving at our table to offer us more goodies for sale. They were careful to only come around one at a time so that we were'nt overwhelmed. Well, you'd think we had spent enough at the trading posts, but no! we all bought a couple more things. The jewelry was nice and it was really cheap. Mary explained that they have to jury into a guild to be able to sell there and that anyone who isn't in the guild or who sells fakes gets chased out by the others.
After lunch we headed straight back to Window Rock. We only had a day and a half to finish our weavings so everyone wanted to get back and make a bit of progress. The plan was to have pizza for dinner and eat in the weaving room so that we could maximize on the evening.
Then, along came Morris Muskett! We had been waiting all week for him to come. I held off on purchases because I knew he would bring something with him that I would want to buy. Jennie saw him coming across the parking lot and got excited. I can see why. Morris has charisma! He also came laden with jewelry boxes full of his own unique designs. It was a veritable feeding frenzy. I came out of it with a beautiful pendant of Changing Woman. Ana bought one of his dragon fly cross pendants and matching earrings. After the dust settled he pulled out his personal collection of weavings to show all of us.
Jewellry boxes and checkbooks! I'm sure it was worth his while to drive from Albuquerque through driving rain to get there.
Here is a picture of the three of us. Meeting Morris was yet another highlight of the week in Navajo land. Now that Morris has experienced Convergence he is hoping to go to the weaving conference in Cusco this year. Morris works as a civil servant but would love to practice his artistic talents full time. He is becoming more and more well known and had the honor this year of being asked to sit on the board of the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe. Check out his website:
http://www.morrismuskett.com/We wish you well on your journey, Morris!
