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Two beautiful, contemporary handmade

Blue Bird flour sack shoulder bag purses by Northern

Arapaho Native Artist, Antonio Williams

The humble old flour sack has never had it so good, in our view. The talented Northern Arapaho Native artist, Antonio Williams crafts these extremely beautiful shoulder bags from cotton Blue Bird brand flour sacks made in Cortez, Colorado. Anyone who has spent more than a couple days or so on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, New Mexico or Utah has probably seen these flour sacks piled up on the floor of a dusty trading post or in a Navajo family’s hogan, where Blue Bird flour has been a well-known longtime familiar local brand staple around the region for nearly a century now since the 1930’s, providing flour for fry bread, kneel down bread, tortillas, dumplings and other baked goods.

Since its beginnings, Blue Bird flour has been the Navajo's brand of choice not only for its fine quality, but for its unique name and graphic design, the blue bird being an important Navajo good luck symbol. But, until Toni williams put her talented hands on them, these flour sacks have always been basic commodity objects to be used and discarded and have never before been elevated into the realm of beautiful, lasting art and fashion forms. Things have dramatically changed and now the humble Blue Bird flour sack through Williams’ unique and wonderful artistry has been transformed from basic utilitarian objects into these lovely, very fashionable statement pieces.

At left, Navajo elders receiving gift boxes including sacks of Blue Bird flour through the Adopt A Native Elder non-profit organization. At center, Northern Arapaho clothing artist, Antonio Williams. At right, a little Navajo girl plays with Blue Bird flour sacks at a Southwest trading post.

Left photo source and © Adopt A Native Elder. Center photo source and © Singing in the Grass Creations. Right photo source and © Southwest Trading Company

Antonio (Toni) Williams is an extremely accomplished Native American artist of Northern Arapaho heritage and descent

and although her historic Native homeland is in the inter-mountain area of Wyoming she has been a longtime Southwestern resident for many years living variously in Utah and Colorado and spending considerable time in Santa Fe. Williams is also the inspiring Matriarch of an intensely accomplished artistic family. Her son, Ken Williams Jr., is an outstanding highly-recognized beadwork artist in Santa Fe whose highly coveted original creations are held in the collections of

many prominent museums and private collections. Ken’s older brother, Dallin is also a well-recognized beadwork artist in Santa Fe and the former Director of the prestigious Southwest American Indian Arts Association or SWAIA in Santa Fe, the organization which sponsors and stages the prestigious annual Santa Fe Indian Market in which Toni Williams has exhibited regularly for many years.

Toni Williams’ Blue Bird flour sack bags themselves are entirely handmade and beautifully hand and machine sewn by her with marvelously complex and very carful detailing. Williams clearly loves fabrics and she augments the Blue Bird flour sack material with additional varied cloth materials of her own choosing, the interesting patterns, colors and textures of which all beautifully complement the Blue Bird fabric pieces. And please pay particular attention to the specific pieces or sections of the Blue Bird flour sacks that Williams artfully selects and trims to use in particular places on her bags such as on the strap handles or in the sides or flaps to emphasize their particular graphic qualities. The bags are also completely reversible and they have completely different and equally attractive visual presentations when worn the opposite way.

The bags measure about 12 1/2" in height and they are approximately 15 1/2" in width and about 4" deep at their deepest bottom point. The handle drop is 10 1/2" from the top of the carrying straps to the top of the bag. Notice that the two bags have somewhat different carrying handle conformations. Both of the bags are in brand new original condition.

We have two bags available at this time and they are somewhat different and are pictured here in detail. We imagine they will sell fairly quickly and if they are sold by the time you would like to buy one we will do our best to get another from Toni Williams but that is far from a certainty. She is making them much less frequently these days than she has in years past.

There is an exceptional amount of original inspired artistry, American history and Native culture contained here in these bags for an extremely reasonable cost. they’re an easy and fun way to look great and carry all your stuff around in style. This is "recycling" at its finest artistic expression. Get yours while this extremely limited supply lasts!

SOLD

“Clothing inspired by my tribal heritage. Machine and hand-sewn clothing with ribbon work and appliqué. Using different types of fabric made of cotton, linen, up-cycled fabrics, silk, wool, leather, or fur.”

-Toni Williams describing her work in SWAIA’s official Santa Fe Indian Market artist listing

SOLD