Mary Holiday Black and Modern Navajo Basketry

For the Navajo people, basketry is an important part of their culture. The weaving patterns and designs used in baskets are today seen in other contemporary products as well. For instance, you will find Navajo Indian art on purses and wallets, which bear a similarity to basket designs. But did you know that Navajo basketry was revived by the efforts of one woman and her community?

In Southeast Utah, in a remote part of the Navajo Nation, families of the isolated Douglas Mesa community heralded an artistic revolution. In the middle part of the 1900s, the Navajo tradition of weaving baskets or ts’aa’, which was once a flourishing trade, seemed to have died out. By the 1970s, the few baskets that remained in the market were solely made for tourists.

However, in Douglas Mesa, there were Navajo artists like Mary Holiday Black who felt the need to tend to their artistic sense as well as the interests of those who purchased their baskets. This led to them slowly modifying their weaving, their designs, the use of colors and even their shape and scale. These new changes in this traditional art found encouragement from both buyers and traders of Navajo art. Mary, who was one of the most well-know weavers in the community, began to experiment with the many technical aspects of basket weaving by using natural plant-based dyes as well as creating smaller and oversized jug shaped baskets - the latter was something that had never been seen before. Slowly, she also began to incorporate traditional rug designs in her ts’aa’. Many others in her community followed suit.

One of the biggest developments in this contemporary art came when Mary started to use sacred symbols and designs on her baskets - something that the rug weavers of the past had done. It is said that Mary was probably the first person to add to their basket designs representations of the Yé’ii. That paved the way for the use of other designs in baskets and marked the beginning of a new and more modern tradition of Navajo basketry.

In the traditional ceremonial baskets of the community, the symbolism was a way to ensure that there was a balance in the ceremonies as well as the people performing those ceremonies. Changing and modernizing the designs meant heralding an imbalance in the community. This was one of the reasons why many Navajo medicine men were against the use of symbols such as the Yé’ii. However, for Mary, these symbols represented a larger part of the Navajo story. Thus began the new basket style that came to be known as the Story Basket.

Black’s influence on modern Navajo basketry has been immense. Her courage to break away from tradition continue to inspire not just present-day weavers but also other modern art forms. If you look at the Navajo art on coin purses or mugs, you will notice that the designs are a departure from what some might call traditional.   

Author’s bio: The author is a blogger. This article is about Mary Holiday Black and modern Navajo basketry.