Furnishing the Santa Fe Style - El Palacio Magazine

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Benches carved with Pueblo and Navajo motifs Hudelson made to cover radiators and provide supplemental seating in the Women’s Board Room by the early 1920s. Photographs by Blair Clark. El Palacio 47
Left: A small bookcase whose carvings, including a swastika, traditional in Navajo weaving, allow the piece to be dated before the motif was associated the threat of Hitler’s Nazi party. Photograph by Blair Clark. his process. He created a lens through which Anglo admirers perceived this form of ceramic art, and Indian motifs entered the vocabulary of contemporary decoration. Hudelson’s initial use of Indian-style ornament may have been in two benches supplied to provide additional seating and cover the radiators in the Women’s Board Room, as shown in photographs from the early 1920s. On one he carved friezes and stepped motifs in common use in the pueblos, and on the other he carved openings in the low back that recall motifs of Navajo rugs. Early in our exploration Dan Goodman and I stumbled across a small bookcase in the museum storage. The carvings of the sides are almost a lexicon of Southwest Indian design. The inclusion of the design of the swastika that had long figured in Navajo weaving told us that the piece had to predate American awareness of the threat from Hitler, who had appropriated the age-old symbol for his Nazi party. A double bench still in use in the galleries recalls the commercial “Mission style” of the benches purchased by Hewett for the gallery opening, but the outlines are softened and the sides with cut-out slats below incised Indian-inspired motifs convey a distinct Southwest character. Were the Indian motifs Hudelson carved on the art museum furniture copied from Chapman’s designs? After examining a number of Chapman’s works I felt the carvings were of a very different character. I was vastly relieved when Dody Fugate, assistant curator for archaeological research collections at the Laboratory of Anthropology, confirmed my observation, saving me hours and hours of poring over still more Chapmania. Most of Hudelson’s carvings are free improvisations adapting Indian design elements, from Mimbres pots to Navajo weavings, drawn from his personal experience. There were two outstanding exceptions, however. One was the front panel on a small reception desk. On seeing my snapshot, Dody cried out, “That’s a Hopi pot!” as indeed the carved bird design resembles that painted on a Hopi pot that she led me to on the shelves of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture storeroom. In the second case I already knew the source, since Dody had published it in her recent El Palacio article coauthored with Pete Pino. I recognized the sun symbol carved on the side of the chest of shallow drawers in the museum basement and also on the side of a desk that has has been traditionally called 48 El Palacio
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Page 3 and 4: SAM HUDELSON Firm in the belief tha
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Page 9 and 10: SAM HUDELSON The “Director’s de

Furnishing the Santa Fe Style - El Palacio Magazine

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