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West by Southwest Ernie Bulow
J. B. MOORE & HIS CATALOG
DID HE REALLY INVENT THE CRYSTAL DESIGN RUG?
J.B. MOORE BEHIND COUNTER AT CRYSTAL
MOORE POSING FOR HIS CATALOG
Though the distinctive Navajo textile tradition is hardly more than two centuries old, it has gone far beyond the Pueblo and Spanish techniques and designs that gave it birth. By the close of the blanket era, the bold colors and often eye-wrenchingly, asymmetrical designs indicate a strong personal statement in taste and aesthetic vision.
By the turn of the last century, as body blankets were dying out, replaced by cheaper, machine-made products, the Navajos needed a cash commodity to sell besides the wool in the spring and the lambs in the fall. At that moment silverwork was not yet widespread. The jump from blanket to rug was hardly a great one, as many Navajo weavings had already found their way onto floors, especially in the Southwest.
A heavier, more durable product was needed; but without changing the looms and tools. It is common knowledge that most early rugs were bought by the pound, so there was no great incentive to clean the wool too well, nor spin too fine, nor take great care in the weaving. Consumers soon demanded a better product and dealers obliged. They were, after all, businessmen.
John Bradford Moore (1855-1926) was only one of the many traders involved in the crucial transition period of Navajo weaving, but a combination of factors got him a substantial amount of credit for
the movement.
Though he and other traders, notably C. N. Cotton, had done catalogues before, his 1911 gem, titled simply The Navajo, was a seismic move. Photographs by Simeon Schwemberger illustrated information on the exotic Navajo people. What made this catalog special were the fifteen full-color plates illustrating his products. He left New Mexico shortly after the catalog appeared and other traders stamped their names and addresses on them and mailed them out.
John B. Moore established his Chuska Mountain post in 1896, the first permanent business in the area. Located near Narbona (Washington) Pass, a trail used since ancient times, the area was mostly occupied seasonally. The country around Crystal is breathtakingly beautiful, but the winters are harsh with deep snows and sub-zero temperatures in the winter. Reservation traders had to provision well, then hunker down to endure the long winter in lonely isolation. That doesn’t give much insight into his thinking when he decided to standardize some designs and appeal to the fledgling trade. All the same, virtually all works on Navajo weaving give him considerable space and high regard. Turn of the century, Navajo weavers were already using commercial yarns, notably the famous
Germantowns. But the large majority of weaving was done with native wool, scarcely cleaned of burs and slick with lanolin. This handicap had been inflicted on the Navajos after they returned to their homeland following the four years at Bosque Redondo in 1868. The new sheep produced inferior,
short staple wool which was hard to clean and card. Moore tried to deal with this major problem by sending a percentage of the clip back East to be commercially cleaned.
Brighter colors were also being introduced, and Moore decided to dye his yarn before he issued it to some of his better weavers. For some reason he chose to process the wool in his own sink. It turned out that early commercial dyes had some sickening properties.
Having the wool processed before it reached the weaver allowed for standardizing colors, strengthening the yarn, and cutting out a difficult and
Curiously, Moore identified the weavers as the designers.
Ernie Bulow
West by Southwest
by Ernie Bulow
DESIGN #24
tedious operation for the ladies. He called the weavings from this commercial yarn “First” or “SPECIAL” grade, classed ER20. The catalog carries the disclaimer that no two rugs would be “exactly” the same, but surely close. Moore is not clear if the variations are a result of poor skills or artistic freedom and doesn’t explain further.
He does write, “But not all good weavers are good designers.” So here is the first problematic element—where did the designs come from? He makes the claim that his weavers worked from pictures provided to them. Curiously the color plates identify the weavers by name and credit them with the designs.
Moore soon discovered he was faced with a huge problem when he decided to offer the weavings by mail. Even with his explanation, buyers were not happy with any great variation. If they purchased design 25, they expected design 25, not something similar.
He never took into account the natural artistic sensibility of his artists. They simply refused to produce the same pattern over and over again. But the general style known as “Crystal” became a thing, and is given credit for morphing into Storm Pattern, Two Grey Hills and Teec Nos Pos designs. This seems to give credit for much of the greatest Navajo weavings to one trader, just because he said he originated the designs.
The elaborate layouts and the use of borders on the Teec Nos Pos rugs further promoted the false impression that Navajo weavers were copying Oriental rugs. There is a long and determined history of assigning Native designs to outside sources. There is simply no proof they even saw Turkish, Russian, or other Middle Eastern pieces to copy.
The fantastic rock formations, gnarled cedar trees, and other natural motifs of the Navajo country are obviously stimulus
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enough. Serrated diamonds and stepped stripes suggest the ever present rock strata, fractured and tipped at crazy angles. Stylized flower and animal figures become unrecognizable when translated into the sharp angles demanded by the loom itself.
Elements like arrows, swastikas crosses, and lighting were known to the Navajos long before the art of weaving. Many of them have some religious meaning to them—lightning, representing rain, so vital in the arid southwest, didn’t need the help of a trader for significance, for example. DESIGN #27
The Navajo is well written and informative—about the people as well as their weaving. It is persuasive. It promises quality, standardization, and above all, a certain snob appeal. The buyer could settle for standard or
“tourist” grade, or they could go for the best, the ER20, promising a premium product for the discerning customer. In 1986, I joined with Avanyu Publishing to produce a facsimile of the original catalog.
It quickly went out of print and now fetches high prices. In my introduction, I alluded to a scandal that caused Moore’s sudden departure.
Frank McNitt in his book The Indian Traders wrote, “A scandal for which he personally was not responsible caused Moore and his wife to leave Crystal…in the autumn of 1911.” Mark Winter, who has kept the post at
Toadlena traditional for the last twenty years, followed up and found more information in the McNitt papers in the State Archive. It seems that Moore had taken a mail-order bride from Germany. She somehow created a fake charitable organization to gather money and goods for the Navajos—but she didn’t pass them on. So within months of the issuing of the catalog, Moore left the country. A charity scam seems like a sad ending to this man.
