Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
First-phase chief's blanket
Not on view
The weaver made this mid-nineteenth-century blanket on an upright loom, improvising as she worked and composing by eye rather than by counting warps and wefts. The resulting pattern is infused with energy and life, reflecting the Southwestern landscape, with its ever-changing colors, landforms, skies, and light. When wrapped around a person, the blanket’s broad, contrasting bands of color break into angles and planes, its configuration shifting with the wearer’s movements. The garment is known as a first-phase wearing blanket because of its distinctive pattern and color. Among the most finely woven of the only sixty of that type known to exist, it is one of only ten that contain red bands between the traditional indigo blue and natural brown.
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