Mired in the 70's

Don McLean, American Pie; Creedence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle; Jackson Browne, Running on Empty; Elton John, Greatest Hits; The Band, Greatest Hits; Neil Young, Harvest; and Three Dog Night, Greatest Hits. As I flipped through my CD case looking for a disk to slip into the car stereo, I realized there was a significant risk that I had become mired in the past. Although there were, in fact, a few contemporary artists featured in the selection, most of the albums were recorded in the 1970s, when I was still in high school and college. I have always thought of myself as progressive, but my music collection indicated otherwise.

As I made my selection, and began listening to the vintage songs, I began to consider how my musical backwardness related to my work at the trading post. Barry and I have always encouraged our artists to create new and innovative works, and thought this placed us on the cutting edge of Southwest art dealers. The local Navajo basket weavers began selling us their work in the mid-1970s, when the contemporary weaving movement was in its infancy. At first, the baskets were really just variations on the traditional wedding/ceremonial motif. We have some very small versions and some that are as big as a wash tub.

In 1977, I left for college and, except for one year, was away from southern Utah for the next thirteen years. In that time Barry and Duke had been encouraging the local Navajo and Ute weavers to improve their weaving skills. It all seemed to start very simply; Duke began asking some of the Ute weavers to recreate baskets he had seen as a young man. That expanded to requesting the Ute and Navajo weavers to try other innovative designs. By the time I returned in 1989 to open Twin Rocks Trading Post, most of the Ute weavers had either passed away or were not producing many baskets. Navajo basketry, on the other hand, had moved into an explosively inventive phase.












Navajo Basket Weaver Elsie Holiday

Within a year or two of opening Twin Rocks in the fall of 1989, I met Elsie Holiday, whom I felt was an extremely creative basket weaver. This was a time in the development of contemporary Navajo basket weaving Barry and I refer to as the “cross cultural” period; meaning that the Navajo weavers were generally experimenting with designs and variations of designs from a variety of other Southwest tribes. We would often see designs from the Papago (now referred to as the “Tohono O’odham”), Pima, Apache, Paiute, Hopi and other tribes represented on Navajo baskets. At times the motifs were literal copies of those designs. Frequently, however, there was a blending of the designs from the other tribes.

The first monumental work Elsie did for the trading post, that I recall anyway, was a series of Pima squash blossom patterns. The largest basket was approximately 30 inches in diameter and had twelve petals. There were two ten petal baskets that were approximately 26 inches in diameter and two more eight petal baskets of approximately 24 inches completed the set. When it was complete we put it in the trading post with a $10,000.00 price tag, which gave Duke, Barry and everyone else in the business heart palpitations. The set eventually sold, and I now wish I had never let it go.

The next show stopper was an orange and gray vessel based on a pottery piece by Richard Zane Smith. Barry and I entered it in the Museum of Northern Arizona Navajo Show, thinking it would win best of show, since it was one of the best pieces we had ever seen. We were crestfallen when it didn’t even win a ribbon; not even an honorable mention. As we began to investigate the reasons why, we were told that the judge had said, “If I give this basket a ribbon, next year there will be gobs and gobs of orange baskets. I can’t live with that.” I guess he had a strong color bias. In order to redeem ourselves, Barry and I shipped the basket off to the Gallup Ceremonials, where it won a first place ribbon. We felt vindicated.

Over the years Elsie has brought baskets into the trading post that are so beautiful and so creative, they just about stop your heart. To look at the photograph album we keep of all the baskets we have purchased over the last eight or ten years, you would think Elsie must be 80 years old, but no, she is not even 40. The body of her work is so large and so diverse it is startling.

When I returned from my trip, I was still worrying about being stuck in the past. When I got to the trading post the next morning, the photograph album was on the counter and open to Elsie’s section. Looking at those baskets gave me hope that there really was a progressive side to my personality, otherwise, I don’t think I would be able to appreciate the beauty of Elsie’s creations.

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