Symbolism in Chiapas Weaving

Kathleen Jenks, PhD, has salvaged the work of the late Paula Guise in Mythology's Mything Links. Visit it for information on information on the symbolism in huipil's woven by the Mayan women of Chiapas.

Guatemalan Weaving, Videos

A short documentary about the work that MayaWorks does with Mayan artisans in Guatemala.


Impact Ministries employs a couple, Carlos and Encarnacion, who weaves table sets (napkins,
placemats, and table runners. A Zaakistan Production






At the lakeside of lake Atitlan in Guatemala a group of weavers are producing a new line of products meant for the European market. In the film the designer Heidi Winge Strøm and two of the guatemalean weavers are telling about the proces of using natural wool in weaving and develop new products. The film is part of a webside that will present and promote their products.

Navajo Weaving Videos

Cute interview with a little weaver.

Interesting look into Navajo life with some footage of weaving and dye preparation.

Navajo Mother Teaches Son to Weave





WEAVING WORLDS highlights the untold stories of the personalities and characters involved in the making and selling of Navajo rugs. The film presents a compelling and intimate portrait of economic and cultural survival through the art of weaving in the face of increased globalization.

Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals

Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals

Product Description
The Quechua people of southern Peru are both agriculturalists and herders who maintain large herds of alpacas and llamas. But they are also weavers, and it is through weaving that their cultural traditions are passed down over the generations. Owing to the region’s isolation, the textile symbols, forms of clothing, and technical processes remain strongly linked to the people’s environment and their ancestors.

Heckman’s photographs convey the warmth and vitality of the Quechua people and illustrate how the land is intricately woven into their lives and their beliefs.

Quechua weavers in the mountainous regions near Cuzco, Peru, produce certain textile forms and designs not found elsewhere in the Andes. Their textiles are a legacy of their Andean ancestors. Andrea Heckman has devoted more than twenty years to documenting and analyzing the ways Andean beliefs persist over time in visual symbols embedded in textiles and portrayed in rituals. Her primary focus is the area around the sacred peak of Ausangate, in southern Peru, some eighty-five miles southeast of the former Inca capital of Cuzco.

The core of this book is an ethnographic account of the textiles and their place in daily life that considers how the form and content of Quechua patterns and designs pass stories down and preserve traditions as well as how the ritual use of textiles sustain a sense of community and a connection to the past. Heckman concludes by assessing the influences of the global economy on indigenous Quechua, who maintain their own worldview within the larger fabric of twentieth-century cultural values and hence have survived everything from Latin American militarism to a tidal wave of post-modern change.

Navajo Weaving Way: The Path from Fleece to Rug

Navajo Weaving Way: The Path from Fleece to Rug

From Library Journal
The publisher has performed a real service in making available the work of Bennett, whose books on Navajo weaving and tradition have been out of print for some time. In 1968, as young woman, Bennett moved to the Navajo reservation in Arizona planning a two-year stay to learn traditional Navajo weaving and spinning techniques. She remained for eight years, learned to weave under the tutelage of Tiana Bighorse, and began a life-long fascination with the Navajo way of life. This volume is a reworking of Bennett's Working with the Wool (1971), The Weaver's Pathway (1974), and Designing with the Wool (1979), combining material from these earlier books with new information on Navajo spinning and dyeing techniques. Recommended for scholarly decorative arts holdings as well as public how-to collections.

Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Navajo Weaving Way is a compilation of Nol Bennett's earlier, out-of-print books on Navajo rug-weaving traditions: Working with the Wool, Designing with the Wool, and The Weaver's Pathway. This book augments the information in Bennett's previous works with all-new chapters on spinning, carding, and dyeing techniques. Illustrations include photographs by John Running of Navajo women carding, spinning, and weaving, along with detailed line drawings depicting specific techniques.