New Book: “The Silence of the Women: Bamana Mud Cloths” by Sarah C. Brett-Smith

I am very excited to finally have a copy of the long awaited book The Silence of the Women: Bamana Mud Cloths by Sarah C. Brett-Smith. Published by 5 Continents this is an important as well as beautiful volume that combines art book presentation with deep ethnographic research. It is several decades since Sarah published a number of interesting and insightful articles on bogolanfini mud cloth, the subject of her Phd research in the 1970s, so it is great to finally read her full work on the subject.

Photo by Sarah C. Brett-Smith. “Salimata Kone painting the “foot of the dove” (ntufan sen) motif in the centre of a cloth decorated with the “Town gate” (Kalanga da) pattern. She is using a metal spatula. Kolokani, 7/5/78.