Pictorial Rugs

The Navajo pictorial rugs of today are fantastic pieces of art that portray in their design a variety of themes including religious ceremonial art, scenes of daily Navajo life, bird pictorials depicting colourful birds around a cornstalk growing from a ceremonial basket, and a variety of still images and writing pictorials. Pictorial images began to show up early in Navajo weaving – as early as the 1860s – and have persevered, becoming their own unique design and expression of Navajo artistic weaving. The portrayal of Navajo ceremonial art in rugs is generally attributed to Hosteen Klah, a Navajo medicine man and weaver born in 1867 and died in 1937.