Posted on my Facebook this morning is a beautiful Navajo Rug. My buddy is looking for an appraisal. I start the task of checking around and wishing I could just call Bruce Burnham at his Trading Post. I just hate to bother him…

I call a couple people that know rugs and try to get prices together and yet…

Bruce Burnham is a living legend that knows rugs, history, and never ceases to amaze me! I have seen him look at a rug and name the weaver and when she wove the rug – today was no different. 

I call down to Bruce Burnham’s Trading Post in Sanders, Arizona and told the lady about the rug – she said “ya gotta call Bruce and ask him – he is not in and I have no idea when he will be” here is his cell…

I hate calling people and bothering friends –

I call him and explain who I am – he knows me – but it has been about four years – anyway…

I describe the rug and I can see him smiling through the phone – I explain that it is an odd cross between a Two Grey Hills and a ? Crystal…he explaines that JB Moore developed the Crystal Weaving patterns and that after his “Rug Empire”collapsed his designs filtered across to Two Grey Hills weavers – that incorporated both patterns into some truly unique rugs. This rug is unique because it is an example of a Two Grey Hills that retained the “love of red” which was ever-present in JB Moore’s designs – red was later filtered out by the Two Grey Hills weavers –

We went on to talk about family and Navajo words “Yabonee” which roughly translates driftwood that stuck on a sandbar and did not move. He tells me how he tracked two different rugs and found the lineage of a young Navajo lady that was so far removed from her tribe through adoption but re-united through rugs!

This diatribe really has no more point than my love for stories, our elders, and Navajo rugs…