Description

In 1896 John Bradford Moore, the mayor of Sheridan, Wyoming, purchased a small trading concern on the Navajo reservation in the Chuska Mountains in Northwest New Mexico and named it the Crystal Trading Post. He joined the current trend of producing heavier weavings for rug use instead of blankets, but mostly stuck to early blanket designs. He began marketing rugs to the East Coast and the Victorian homes of the era. A Buyer could order a catalog from Moore, choose a design they favored and could order a likeness, a VARIANT of that rug. It would never be an exact copy because the Navajo loom was not a reproduction machine. In some instances his wife dyed the wool. This special wool was given to the best weavers. The end products from Crystal Trading Post were often extraordinary and Moore’s long term effects on Navajo weavings are well acknowledged in many publications. These new designs were quickly imitated and expanded upon by the neighboring Two Grey Hills weavers in the following years and then to the Bisti and Teec Nos Pos regions, thereafter becoming some of the most imaginative weavings of the times.

-excerpts from “J.B. Moore Plate Rug Variants, From The 1903 and 1911 Catalogs -A private collection-”

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