“Navajo Textiles,” “Spoken Through Clay”

“Navajo Textiles,” by Laurie D. Webster, Louise I. Stiver, D.Y. Begay and Lynda Teller Pete. Denver Museum of Nature and Science/university Press of Colorado.

Wealthy New Englanders Francis and Mary Crane began collecting Indian weavings and other Native American objects in 1948 with the idea of starting their own Indian museum. Previously, they were known for introducing Great Pyrenees dogs into the U.S., but their interest changed after Francis had a life-threatening illness. The Indian objects came from all over, but the biggest supplier was Erich Kohlberg, who for years operated a store in downtown Denver. Francis was a wily buyer, and Kohlberg once complained, “You’re a hard man … I am not in a non-profit business.”

Over the years, the Cranes assembled a 12,000-artifact collection, often purchasing rugs in quantity rather than going after prize-winning or museum-quality pieces. Their collection, one of the largest in the world, eventually ended up in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The museum includes the best of the Cranes’ 273 weavings and weaving-related objects in this beautifully illustrated volume.

“Navajo Textiles” begins with two essays on the history of Navajo weavings and exhibitions, followed by two more pieces written by contemporary Navajo weavers. One of them Lynda Teller Peter. At the urging of Shiprock trader, Ed Foutz, Pete along with her family, spent four years weaving a 60-by-104 inch Two Grey Hills tapestry that sold for a record $60,000.

In addition to historic photographs, the book features 100 color plates of Navajo rugs from the Crane Collection, most of them woven before 1950. They illustrate the richness and diversity of Navajo weaving art.

“Spoken Through Clay: Native Pottery of the Southwest,” by

Charles S. King. Museum of New Mexico.

Like the Cranes, Eric S. Dobkin is a collector of Indian art, although he is more focused. He concentrates on southwestern pottery, purchasing only the finest pieces. “Spoken Through Clay” is massive book with exquisite photographs of Dobkin’s collection. Unlike the Cranes, who depended on traders and Indian arts dealers, Dobkin engages a curator to locate the best works available, many award-winners. As a partner and managing director of Goldman Sachs, he has the wherewithal to do so.

Native American pottery is in the forefront of the movement to create new paradigms in art, Dobkin writes in an introduction. “Only the material remains traditional — clay is clay. It is the creative intent that is different.” So while the collection includes works by classical potters such as Nampeyo, a Hopi; Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso, famed for her black-onblack pieces, and Santa Clara’s Tafoya family, most of the potters are They tell their own stories.

Instead of grouping potters by pueblo or tribe, the book places them in seven different categories — Dreamers, Traditionalists, Transitionists, Modernists, Visionaries, Transformists and Synchronicity. The work ranges from primitive early pots to sculptural works and brightly painted, sometimes humorous contemporary work.

The artistic evolution Dobkin writes about is evident in the work of one Santa Clara family. “I’ve come to realize that each pot is a prayer,” writes Nathan Youngblood, whose pots have bold, heavily incised designs. He learned pottery from his grandmother, Margaret Tafoya. Margaret was the matriarch of a large family of potters. “She would look at you while she was working. She wouldn’t look down. It was mostly from feel,” says Nancy Youngblood, another grandchild. Youngblood’s pottery is a series of elegant swirling ribs

Like “Navajo Textiles,” “Spoken Through Clay shows that Indian art forms are not dying out, they are evolving.

“A Century of Change in Colorado: Then and Now, The Complete Collection,” by Lawrence M.

Johnson. Raven Printing.

For the past few years, Lawrence M. Johnson has traversed Colorado, turnis out books of then-andnow photographs. He takes century-old pictures of towns and landscapes, locates the settings and matches them with contemporary photos from the same locations.

Now Johnson combines photos of the best of those sites with 40 new ones into a single outsize book. That means hundreds of pictures of 101 different Colorado locations. In addition, he includes histories, random pictures and directions so that readers can take their own photographs. The result is a comprehensive look at all corners of Colorado a cencontemporary. tury ago and today.

The changes are significant. Fremont Pass, once a D&RG waystation, has morphed into an industrial setting with Bartlett Mountain behind it worn down over the years from molybdenum mining. Colorado Springs’ Kiowa street, a bucolic dirt road 100 years ago, is a busy downtown avenue with only one century-year-old structure still standing.

Other sites are little changed. Black Hawk’s main street looks as it did a century ago, except that the flood debris back then is gone. Mesa Verde’s Balcony House today is idening tical to what it was a hundred years earlier. The only difference in two photos of Maroon Peak is one is black-and-white, the other color.

“A Century of Change in Colorado” is a massive undertaking. The result is a comprehensive look in pictures of how the state has evolved over 100 years.

Sandra Dallas is a Denver author.