2019 Indian Art Market Honors Etta Claw Peacock

Etta Claw Peacock won second prize at this year's Indian Art Market for her Navajo rug. Credit: NHMU

By Riley Black

Navajo rugs connect threads across generations. For Navajo artist Etta Claw Peacock, who took the second place award at this year’s Indian Art Market, her lifetime’s experience weaving is a tie back to her mother.

“These came down from my mom, my mother’s designs,” she says of the handwoven rug she brought to the Art Market. Made from one hundred percent wool and colored with all her own natural dyes, the piece represents medicine men gathered to heal their patient. This particular rug took three months to create, she says, but its significance reaches much further through time.

Riley Black is the author of Skeleton Keys, My Beloved Brontosaurus, Prehistoric Predators, and a science writer for the Natural History Museum of Utah, a part of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Our mission is to illuminate the natural world and the place of humans within it. In addition to housing outstanding exhibits for the public, NHMU is a research museum. Learn more.