Minority Textile Treasures
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Meet Pam Najdowski
I am originally from the small town of Warren in northwestern Pennsylvania. I have lived in Santa Fe since 1977 where I moved after a two-year trip around the world. I was looking for a unique place to establish myself in my career as a social worker. I later became a teacher and have retired from Santa Fe Public Schools twice. My husband and I have two grown children and two grandchildren living in Australia and Vietnam.I sell traditional vintage ethnic clothing and other textiles such as quilts and bedcovers, scarves, purses, and smaller panels of embroidery and batik, primarily from the ethnic minorities of China. Additionally, I have a large selection of jewelry made by the Miao Ethnic Minority of Guizhou Province in SW China including earrings, bracelets, and ceremonial neckpieces and headdresses. Other minority crafts represented are beautiful antique baskets, leather and wooden items, and pipes. I specialize in antique and vintage Chinese Children’s Hats, both Minority and Han Chinese. I also have textiles and jewelry from other parts of the world that I have visited.
My interest in textiles is long standing, but I became fascinated with textiles of the Chinese Minority People in 2003 when I began a two-year assignment to work as a counselor at the International School of Tianjin, China. School vacation trips took me to all parts of China, but I was particularly enthralled with the people in rugged southwest China. Over-eager collecting resulted in the need to share the gorgeous textiles created by these strong people living in difficult and challenging conditions. My interest is in both older classical pieces, and in the continuation of textile and jewelry traditions in work done today.
I had a imagined a retirement plan that included traveling the world in the winter and selling textiles in the summer at Santa Fe’s famous Tesuque Flea Market. That flea market is now a casino, but fortunately Lesley Martin started the Traveler’s Market, of which I have been a part since the early days. I also participated in the International Folk Art Market by sponsoring silversmiths from Guizhou Province for several years. I still travel and collect items for sale, with recent trips to Morocco, Guadalajara, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Peru, Colombia, Laos, Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and to Tibetan areas of China as well as Southwest China.
Often people will remark that Traveler’s Market feels like coming to a museum. I do want folks to know that in my booth as in many others booths at Traveler’s Market many of the items are of “museum quality”. Some of the items I have in my booth were not collected directly by me, but were initially purchased by others who traveled to the minority areas of China in the 1980’s and early 1990’s when that area was first opened up to foreign visitors. I am particularly proud to have items from the estate of the late Peter Nelson an early dealer and travel guide to Guizhou and Yunnan Provinces. Some of those items have been sold back to China and are now in museums in Beijing.