A Classic Bayeta Serape with a Large Aggregate Diamond, Navajo,
circa 1840, also known as the Yorba Serape.
A Classic Bayeta Serape with a Large Aggregate Diamond, Navajo, circa 1840, also known as the Yorba Serape.
The serape measures 76 inches long by 51 inches wide, as woven.
Ex- Bernardo Antonio Yorba II (1801-1858), Rancho Cañón de Santa Ana, Alta California. Yorba Linda, California, was named after Bernardo Yorba II. Yorba II collected the serape during the 1840s. The serape remained in the Yorba family until 2008. The Yorba serape is the only known example of a classic bayeta serape with collection history linking it to one of California’s Spanish land grant families.
Yorba collected the serape in mint condition. Corner tassels, side selvages and top and bottom edge cords are 100% original. The serape qualifies as a condition rarity.
Exhibited: Agnes Martin / Navajo Blankets, Pace Gallery, Palo Alto, and Chelsea /
New York, 2018.
Exhibited: Agnes Martin / Navajo Blankets, Pace Gallery, Palo Alto, and Chelsea / New York, 2018.
The red yarns are raveled bayeta piece-dyed with cochineal. All of the red yarns were raveled from the same bolt of bayeta fabric.
The blue yarns are handspun Churro fleece dyed in the yarn with indigo.
The white yarns are un-dyed handspun Churro fleece.
Bernardo Antonio Yorba II. Oil on Canvas, circa 1840.
Attributed to Henri Pénelon (French, 1827 – 1885).
In the collection of the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, California;
by donation from Mrs. Herman Locke and Bernardo Marcus Yorba, Jr.
Yorba Hacienda, the home of Bernardo Antonio Yorba II, and the Yorba family.
Yorba Hacienda was built by Bernardo Antonio Yorba II, during the 1830s.
The photograph was taken in 1926.
During the twentieth century, Bernardo Antonio Yorba II’s grandson,
Bernardo Marcus Yorba, Jr., (1921-1998), inherited the Yorba Serape
from his father, Bernardo Marcus Yorba, Sr.
Yorba Hacienda, the home of Bernardo Antonio Yorba II, and the Yorba family. Yorba Hacienda was built by Bernardo Antonio Yorba II, during the 1830s. The photograph was taken in 1926.
During the twentieth century, Bernardo Antonio Yorba II’s grandson, Bernardo Marcus Yorba, Jr., (1921-1998), inherited the Yorba Serape from his father, Bernardo Marcus Yorba, Sr.
The following account of Bernardo Marcus Yorba, Jr.’s life was excerpted from his obituary in the June 16, 1998, edition of the Los Angeles Times:
His great-great-grandfather, José Antonio Yorba, was one of 62 Spanish soldiers who accompanied Gaspar de Portola in a 1769 expedition to California. He was rewarded for his loyalty to the king with a 62,000-acre land grant that included much of what is now Santa Ana, Tustin, Orange and Costa Mesa. “He had the genealogical background that gave him an extreme measure of prestige, but he never pushed it,” Orange County historian Jim Sleeper said. “His family's influence in Orange County cannot be overestimated. Yet he was a man without any pretensions whatsoever. He was as kindhearted a soul as I've ever known.”
In recent years, Yorba, 77, was known as a rancher and land developer. He lived on property in Santa Ana Canyon that was part of the original land grant. His widow, Margaret Yorba, recalled that fifty years ago the property was a working ranch “filled with big, empty rolling hills that provided us with a wonderful life for our children.”
Margaret Yorba said her husband died peacefully in his Anaheim Hills home while watching television. The couple had been married for 55 years and met when both were students at Fullerton High School.
“Ours was a marriage that wasn't supposed to last,” she said. “Our families were opposed to it, partly on religious grounds. I was Protestant at the time, and Bernardo was Catholic.”
In March 1943, Margaret Yorba took her first train ride to Roswell, N.M., to attend her then-boyfriend's graduation from flight school and promotion to second lieutenant. Neither one told of their secret plans to wed. The couple were married at the Roswell Air Force Base chapel.
Seven months later, Yorba was shot down over Germany while piloting a B-17 on a bombing mission over the ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt. He was liberated just before the war’s end.
After the war, Yorba returned to California and attended Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he earned a degree in business. Margaret Yorba said that he gave up plans to go to law school so he could return home and run the family ranch.
Throughout his life, Yorba was fascinated by the history of the state’s great ranchos during the Spanish-Mexican era and collected memorabilia from what he called “that golden age of California.”
In 2000, Margaret Yorba, Bernardo Marcus Yorba, Jr.’s widow, sold the Yorba Serape to a private collector in Tucson. In December, 2017, Joshua Baer & Company purchased the serape from the Tucson private collector. In January, 2018, the serape was purchased from Joshua Baer & Company by the current owner.
