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Navajo Native Dyes: Their Preparation and Use
Navajo Native Dyes: Their Preparation and Use
Monograph · 78 pages
A 1940 pamphlet in the Indian Handcraft Series (no. 2) giving recipes for dyeing wool yarn with native Navajo plant and mineral dyes. Recipes were formulated by Nonabah G. Bryan, compiled by Stella Young, and illustrated with drawings by Charles Keetsie Shirley. It opens with an account of Mrs. Bryan dyeing yarn for a rug, then covers wool preparation, natural wool colors, whitening, and mordants such as raw alum and juniper ashes. The main section lists dye plants alphabetically, each with its Latin and Navajo names, a botanical drawing, and numbered color recipes giving quantities, boiling times, and resulting shades from yellows and tans to browns, rose, grays, greens, and the Navajo bluish black.

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