Small runs. Slow hands.
Every material has a place. Every maker has a name.
Worn wherever you take it.
01 — HOW ETKIE WORKS
We build long relationships with people who make things better than anyone else. Then we build products on those relationships. Never the other way around.
The beadwork came from thirteen years of relationship with Diné artists. We never meant to start a business and that's why we have a business thirteen years later. The business runs on their pace, their calendars, their family and cultural commitments. Each artist decides how much work they take on and when. We did not set out to give anyone a job. We set out to make it possible to build an art practice from home, on their own terms.
The wool came the same way. We work directly with Jacob, the owner of American Woolen, and with Arthur and Tammy, the people behind the machines. The capes are sewn in New York by Katie and JR, the best in the industry at wool. The buttons are made in Albuquerque by T Skies, our long-term cooperative partner.
02 — BEADWORK
We started because of a mispricing
In New Mexico, we kept seeing the same thing: Native beadwork, some of the most demanding textile work in North America, selling for a fraction of what the skill behind it is worth. By federal estimates, as much as 80 percent of the jewelry sold as Native American made may be counterfeit, and every fake drags the price of the real thing down.
The talent was never the problem. The talent was already here, doing the best work in the field. The valuation was the problem, and a valuation is something a business can fix. We find the people doing the best work, we name them, we pay them, and we connect them to people who will value the work correctly.
- TOGETHER
- 13 years
- DINÉ ARTISTS
- Ten
- BEADS PER CUFF
- 1,200+
03 — WOOL
American wool has its own mispricing
Most of the wool grown in this country is shipped overseas to be spun into someone else’s fabric. Not because it can’t be done here. It can, beautifully. It is just expensive, and the market for it has to be built. So we built our piece of it.
It takes two years to gather enough fleece from the King Ranch in New Mexico for one run of 150 undyed capes. That is the cost of insisting on single-origin wool from a breed developed here and nowhere else, acclimated over generations to the high desert. The fleece goes east to American Woolen, one of the last woolen mills still running in America, where it becomes yarn, then cloth, then goes on to New York to be sewn. The buttons are silver, hand-hammered in Albuquerque by our partner T Skies.
- TO GATHER
- 2 years
- KING RANCH RUN
- 150
- NMSU RUN, BLACK
- 90
A chain of makers and artists, named and valued
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Ten Diné Artists
Loomed at home, To'hajiilee, New Mexico
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King Ranch
Single-origin fleece, high desert New Mexico
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American Woolen
Stafford Springs, Connecticut
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T Skies
Hand-hammered silver buttons, Albuquerque
06 — HONORING THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE
Etkie acknowledges the complex history of the lands on which we live and work. Our Albuquerque office resides on the ancestral and unceded homelands of the Tiwa people and numerous Pueblo nations, as well as the Navajo and Apache peoples. We recognize the deep and enduring connections Indigenous peoples maintain with this land.
In alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we respect the rights of Indigenous communities as the traditional stewards of these lands.
An acknowledgment means little without action behind it. The Diné women we partner with are not a symbol of this place. They are working artists, and our company exists because of them. Our commitment is to keep building a business in which the people whose homelands these are share in what is created here, on their own terms.
