Wearing African Textiles - part 3

	Yoruba aso oke strip woven cloth from Nigeria was widely admired in West Africa and was traded in large quantities to nearby countries. In this rare postcard image from Sierra Leone, taken around 1905, the lady at the right is wearing an aso oke shawl similar to the C19th example below.
	Very rare C19th wrapper cloth. Magenta trans-Saharan silk is used for both warp and weft in the plain strips making the cloth very lightweight. These strips alternate with magenta silk weft float patterns on a fine blue and white check ground. This is an early example of a style of cloth that continued to be made into the 1950s. More information on this cloth in our online gallery here