New Book: “Adire Cloth in Nigeria 1971–2016”

In part an updated version of Doig Simmonds and Nancy Stansfield’s classic 1971 book on adire, this new work is without doubt the  most useful and comprehensive book on the Yoruba tradition of indigo resist dyeing to date.  Although published as a print on demand book  and with budget limitations apparent in the reproduction of some images the authors add new material such and have drawn together the most important of previous sources, including Jane Barbour’s important articles, and an interesting article by John Picton that even I had missed. I have scanned the back cover, contents page and a typical page below. Click on the photos to enlarge. The book may be ordered direct from Doig at doigds@gmail.com priced at GBP18 plus postage.

Indigo Details

Mossi strip weave, Burkina Faso.

Yoruba stitch-resist adire, Nigeria, 1960s.

Strip weave, Niger, mid C20th.

Hausa strip weaves, Nigeria, circa 1970.

Yoruba strip weave aso oke, Nigeria, early C20th.

Yoruba strip weave aso oke, Nigeria, early C20th.

Yoruba starch resist adire eleko, Nigeria, circa 1960s.

Hausa stitch resist, Nigeria, circa 1970.

Efik stitch resist, Nigeria, mid C20th.

Please visit our website to view our selection of indigo cloths.

African Textiles–details from the shop

Weft-faced Ewe cloths, Ghana/Togo

Yoruba adire cloths, Nigeria

Indigo striped strip weaves, Ivory Coast.

Mostly blankets from Mali.

Mossi indigo cloths, Burkina Faso.

Yoruba indigo cloths, Nigeria.

Ewe men’s cloths, Ghana/Togo.

Dioula and Bondoukou men’s cloths, Ivory Coast.

For other views of these cloths please visit our website.

Blue Notes

If today people associate African fabrics with the bright colours of wax prints, lace, and kente,  as recently as the 1960s indigo blue cloths were ubiquitous throughout much of West Africa.  Indigo still dominates the stacked piles of vintage fabrics in my shop and still underlies many later developments in local textile design. Yet only a few quite isolated pockets of natural indigo production and use still remain in remote regions in West Africa itself. The personal journey of discovery that led her to investigate some of those often elusive surviving traces forms the subject of Catherine E. McKinley’s recent book Indigo: in Search of the Color that Seduced the World (Bloomsbury, 2011).

Catherine was the first person to buy a cloth from my first website back in the mid 1990s so we have been talking about indigo and I have been waiting to see this book for a long time. For me it captures both the rewards and the occasional frustrations of a long engagement with West Africa and its people as much as its textile traditions. A blend of social history, ethnography, travel, personal encounter and autobiography in a mix that is at times lyrical, at times less comfortable, it is a fine book that adds something unusual and distinctive to the literature on Africa’s textile history.

Also well worth noting for anyone interested in indigo is this new documentary film, available on DVD - Blue Alchemy: Stories of Indigo (www.newdealfilms.com) . If Catherine’s book draws our attention to the decline in indigo traditions in Africa, this beautiful film, directed by Mary Lance, looks at current attempts to revive indigo use and maintain important traditions both in Nigeria and in many other parts of the world.

“Ibadan is sweet:” exploring a Yoruba adire eleko cloth.

(click on the photo for a larger view. Image copyright Duncan Clarke 2011. Do not reproduce without permission.)

Adire eleko is a tradition of elaborate indigo dyed resist patterned cloths that flourished among the Yoruba people of south west Nigeria from the early C20th until the 1970s. Eleko means “with starch” and refers to the cassava starch hand painted on the cloth as a resist agent prior to dyeing with indigo, while adire is Yoruba for “tie and dye”, alluding to the earlier traditions of resist patterning from which this style was created.

The cloth shown above is a notably fine example of one of the classic adire eleko designs, called “Ibadandun”, which translates as “Ibadan is sweet or happy.” Ibadan, a large city north of Lagos, was, along with Abeokuta, the major centre where adire cloths were made. It was collected in the 1960s by Doig Simmonds, co-editor with Jane Barbour of the important book “Adire Cloth in Nigeria” (Institute of African Studies, Ibadan, 1971.)

In this post I will explore some of the designs that make up an Ibadandun, drawing on another publication by the late Jane Barbour that is still the most detailed documentation of adire designs (“Nigerian ‘Adire’ Cloths”, Baessler-Archiv, Neue Folge, Band XVIII, 1970.) Each completed cloth had a different combination of these designs, together with others, and individual variations on them. The interpretations that Barbour collected, a few of which are given below, seem to have been widely agreed in some cases, disputed in others, but are nevertheless worth noting.

Spoons and the pillars of Mapo Hall. Mapo Hall is a grand pillared structure built in Ibadan in the late 1940s.

Umbrella and cassava leaves.

Eggs. I have heard this called cocoa pods.

Hens, hedgehogs, divination board, roundabouts..

Chameleons, scorpions, hens..

To see this cloth and others for sale on our website click here

Some more vintage Yoruba adire cloths from Nigeria

Today we have updated the selection of vintage adire cloths from the Yoruba speaking region of Nigeria on our website. Adire means tie and dye, although many of the hand made patterns were created using painted on cassava starch to resist the indigo dye. Details of descriptions, sizes and prices on our gallery here or visit us in London…..

Adire African Textiles

Adire African Textiles is a small London based gallery dedicated solely to exploring the vintage textile traditions of sub-Saharan Africa. We work with a network of partners throughout West Africa to source exceptional museum quality textiles for clients that include leading museums worldwide, private collectors, and interior designers. A selection of these textiles can be viewed online at our site www.adireafricantextiles.com as well as at our space in Alfies Antique Market, Marylebone, London (for location details and opening hours see here. )
Although weaving and dyeing continue to flourish in many parts of West Africa many old styles have changed beyond recognition or died out altogether. As time passes and memories fade knowledge of these past glories is increasingly preserved in museums and private collections, as well as captured in vintage photographs and archival documents. Recognition of the achievements of African textile artists has grown since the 1960s leading to a growing body of scholarship, research, publications, and exhibitions devoted both to the traditions of the past and to textile production, dress styles and fashion in Africa today. This blog will review new publications, and where possible new exhibitions. I will also be looking at online resources, in particular at important museum collections of African textiles that are increasingly accessible on the net. I will consider what can be learned from vintage images of textile production and use, such as the wonderful postcard from Senegal, dated circa 1910, accompanying this post. It shows a Wolof lady wearing two indigo cloths with incredibly intricate embroidered resist patterns typical of urban Senegalese ceremonial dress in the early decades of the C20th - I will return to these elusive and fascinating cloths in a future post. Occasionally I will highlight significant new acquisitions in our gallery or specific groups of our textiles.