Dineh Carpet Designs

About Dineh Carpet Designs

The Dineh people are very strict about the usage of many of their images and designs, especially on items for sale to the public. It's hard to take back a spiritual design once it has been set free in the world. It's hard to be forgiven for doing that, too. So Dineh pottery artists tend to stick to using designs that have been pre-approved for transmission into the outside world. The vast majority of those designs have been woven into Dineh carpets for more than a hundred years now. That allows the potters a vast catalog of simple, easily repeatable designs to work with, should they choose to do more than just offer simple biyo' designs on fire-clouded brown pottery.

In that catalog of carpet designs are various approved designs for yeibichai, Dineh spiritual entities. Those designs are often used by Nancy Yazzie and the McKelvey family.

Ida Sahmie went a bit further: she uses designs depicting Day Chant and Night Chant Dancers. However, she feels the need to have the appropriate dance done for her before she sits down to paint those. She feels that's how she wards off evil spirits and earns permission to paint those images. Christian Dineh potters don't go through that, but they don't use those images either.

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