Navajo Rugs
In January of 2018, I began to work on a collection of Navajo Rugs. The collector had recently died, and his widow wanted to catalog the collection as part of her husband's estate. She was unsure of how many rugs there were, and though she had often been with him when he purchased the textiles, she didn't remember much about them. Her husband had saved the majority of his receipts and invoices, but many of them did not have an accompanying picture or description.
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The first thing I did was find all of the rugs (many of which were folded up in closets or even stored under beds). This was slightly complicated by the fact that the collection was divided between their homes in New York and Santa Fe.
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Then, I photographed and measured each rug.
Once I had found all the rugs, I gave each of them a unique identification number and began to enter the information in a spreadsheet. At this point, it was time to delve into the owner's records.
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When he first began his collection, he kept a notebook with descriptive details and sales information, which made connecting the sales information to the appropriate rug much simpler for that portion of his collection. Unfortunately, his notes were only for purchases made between 1970 and 1990, and he had continued collecting until 2016.
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After connecting these rugs with invoices, I moved on to any invoices with descriptions or photographs, and associated that information. Now, I was left with invoices that could not readily be connected to any of the rugs. The time for research had come.
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With just a little background reading, I learned to tell the difference between Teec Nos Pos, Two Grey Hills, Ganado, and Germantown rugs. This enabled me to identify the remainder and finish putting the information in order.
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The client did not want me to create a database for the collection, since she planned to sell many of them. Instead, I made a simple spreadsheet and put together physical binders where the invoices and other information were filed with images of the rugs.
When the client had arranged to sell the rugs on consignment through a gallery, I provided the gallery with a pdf providing provenance and descriptive information for each rug. At the client's request, I also pulled the provenance information from the binders and sent it to the gallery selling the rugs so that they could be given to the new owners.
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It was not my job to appraise or sell any of the collection, but by organizing all of the client's information about the rugs, I was able to facilitate their eventual sale.
