The making of a Navajo blanket
This 1902 New York publication by George H. Pepper, an ethnographic account aimed at general readers and collectors, documents the step-by-step process of making Navajo blankets. The four photographs show a woman spinning yarn seated on sand beside a spindle, an elderly weaver carding wool with a bundle of fleece on her lap, a woman beside long hanks of fleece hung on a line, and a child seated at a horizontal loom set against a sandstone cliff. Designers can take from them the raw, documentary style of early ethnographic photography: plain outdoor settings, natural textures of wool and sand, and tight, unposed compositions.
