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From the Foreword by Joe Ben Wheat, Curator of Anthropology, University of Colorado Museum, "...When the Navajo weaver mastered tapestry technique, she gained the means of producing any decorative motif she desired. The bold terraced patterns of classic blankets and the serrate diamonds of later times are products of a tapestry technique that differed in no vital way from that of the fine tapestries of Europe. From the small birds in the Chief White Antelope blanket to 'soap label' copies or railroad trains, to the fully composed pictorials of today, there have always been a few weavers who went beyond the standard geometric designs to depict something that intrigued or amused them, or to create a picture expressive of the life around them. Horses and cattle, hogans and schoolhouses, cornstalks and birds, the land itself, even tigers and kangaroos seen in a traveling circus or a TV commerical - these are the stuff of yesterday's pictorials and today's...."