One of the best-kept secrets in Utah is Robert Redford's Sundance mail-order catalog. It debuted a year ago when it was mailed to 250,000 prospects nationwide.
The catalog offers Indian and Western items the General Store at Sundance has been selling since 1970. Its pages were filled with colorful home furnishings, clothing, jewelry and gifts. And many of them have been handcrafted exclusively for Sundance.With its new 40-page fall catalog fresh off the press, Sundance is celebrating by hosting its first annual autumn catalog show and sale Saturday, Sept. 22, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 23, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The show will be held in the Sundance Rehearsal Hall in Provo Canyon.
Admission to the show and sale is free. A Western barbecue will be prepared and served from recipes found in "The Rocky Mountain Cookbook." The barbecue will be $5.95 for adults and $3.95 for children 12 and under.
You'll enjoy a lot of exciting visual moments as you thumb through the catalog's colorful pages. Some of the items you'll find are:
Rustic furniture made of Gambel Oak; distinctive Navajo silver and turquoise jewelry; Western boots for men handmade in Texas, combining Western and European styling; pig pottery from Chile; and whimsical rock-art candlesticks by metal artists Arch Brady and Clark Brereton.
There are American Frontier beds designed by Mary Whitesides and made of timeworn ranch wood; soft leather moccasins beaded by Manitoba Indians in Canada; hand-knit sweaters; bold, multicolored cotton rugs; buffalo sculptures created by Ivan Barnett; and canvas and leather travel bags by Lou Ann Bower.
In his opening message for the 1990 fall catalog, Redford said, "We are proud of the relationship between these skilled people of unusual vision, American history, the environments which produced both, and our role in bringing them to you."
Proceeds from the sale of the catalog collection benefit the Sundance Institute for the Arts and the Institute for Resource Management, a non-profit environmental foundation.