Is It a Navajo Rug? The Lazy Line and Spirit Line to Look For

Hi guys, today we have a Navajo rug. A Navajo weaving made by the Navajo and Diné people. Been making these things for a long time. Started sometime in the 1800s. Beautiful rugs. So I want to show you something. How to kind of look for key distinguishing factors of if this style of rug is Navajo or not. Now this is not an exhaustive thing and I'm not a Navajo rug specialist. But I know a little bit about it. So, where was it?

Ah, yes. See how there's a lot of just kind of patterned same frequency and then you have this right here. This is an example of what's called a lazy line. You're definitely not lazy, first of all, if you're making these rugs. So, that's just where she's doing her weaving and she took a break that day and she paused. Then she picked it up the next day and that's where she started off. They call it a lazy line. It's just it took more than a day to make this rug.

So that's one thing to look for. Another thing is, let me see a great example over here. At the end of the rugs they have what's called a spirit line. Where there's a piece of thread that goes through the end of the rug here. And there's a lot of different nuance around that. But step one, you're looking at an old rug you think is Navajo. Try to find a lazy line where there's a little break in the pattern, a little break in the color from where they stopped one day and then they started the next day.

There's a lot of Mexican rugs that look like they're native rugs. And we can get into that with another video. We have some Mexican rugs out there. But all that to say, we love these. These things are so cool. So much blood, sweat and tears and history is in these rugs. It's like phenomenal. So we personally love these. We're always buying these things. If you have any questions, send photos. We'd love to be the guys. 949-449-1255.

Bye.

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The guides and pages this video is part of.

• Sell the rug for what the weaver put into it.