Weavings featured in El Paso Saddleblanket's wholesale catalog are not produced by Native Americans. For nearly 30 years EPSB has proudly specialized in quality handweaving, mostly from Indians in Mexico. For some products, we have often contracted the artistic skills of weavers in Guatemala, Ecuador, and India.

Handweaving, although starting 1000 years ago as a Nomadic craft in the Middle East, has almost always been a commercial endeavor ­ thus there is little recorded as to the origin of designs. Generally, traders have effected the majority of influence over patterns, color, and quality control.

From the earliest experimentation with lines and angles, weavers have continually adapted and absorbed ideas from other cultures to upgrade the craft and increase marketability.

In the New World, between 1700-1800, Navajo Indians learned handweaving techniques from the Spanish and Pueblos. Until the late 1800's, the products were simple wearing blankets for themselves and Chief's blankets that they traded to the Plains Indians. What most people think of as Navajo design rugs were invented by early territorial traders using ideas from photographs of Persian carpets mixed with Pre-Columbian architectural designs from the Mitla Ruins in Mexico. Add in sheeps wool, imported dyes, and some entrepreneurial spirit, and the Navajo rug became a marketable product. Today, the finest of Navajo rugs are very expensive.