Yoruba asooke in the Gold Coast, circa 1900

This photograph from the Basel Mission archive shows a wife of the King of Accra. She is dressed in the fashionable style of the day, with a typical high swept hairstyle, and most likely would have been of Ga ethnicity.   Although the description only notes that it dates to “before 1917” it appears earlier and more likely around 1900.  Aside from being a fine image it interests me because it provides a rare early glimpse of Yoruba asooke cloth in use in the Gold Coast. Folded across her lap is a shawl in a classic Yoruba strip weave design of the late C19th, similar to the example from our gallery shown below.

From the later decades of the C19th until the 1960s Ghana provided a large and important market for Yoruba weavers. Growing numbers of Yoruba people settled in the Gold Coast (most were expelled from the then independent Ghana in 1969) and traders from the Oyo Yoruba town of Ogbomoso dominated the export trade in asooke. Much of the cloth was woven to order, with traders gathering sufficient orders then walking back to their home region to organise the weaving of  the cloth, either in Ogbomoso or in the larger weaving towns nearby such as Iseyin,  Ilorin and Oyo. In the early decades of the twentieth century many of these traders used bicycles, packing a large bundle of cloth on the saddle then pushing it several hundred miles back to the north of Ghana.

Although locally woven cloth and cloth traded from elsewhere in the country was of course available throughout Ghana from Asante, Ewe, and other weavers, the imported varieties from Nigeria offered an alternative that at least in the case of more expensive examples using silk from the trans-Saharan trade, was highly valued. Our photograph provides a rare visual proof of this high status. Posing for a portrait photograph was a rare and important event at that period, and every detail of the sitter’s appearance and outfit would have been carefully selected. For a high status woman such as the wife of a king to display an asooke shawl so prominently in the photograph clearly indicates that it was a prized and prestigious possession. 

Cloth of the month–an exceptional Bondoukou man’s cloth.

fr473 - One of a very small number of museum quality Bondoukou men's cloths, this subtle and beautiful piece uses complex blocks of coloured weft threads muted by the predominant indigo warp as the sole decorative effect. Although this is a very old decorative technique found in some of the earliest Ghanaian textiles the sophisticated effect achieved here by varying the colours and the placement of blocks is to my knowledge unique. One strip is missing from each edge (they were likely removed because they were excessively frayed) but the cloth is otherwise in very good condition with no patches, holes, or stains. Dates from C19th or early C20th. Measurements: 118ins x 71ins, 300cm x 180cm. PRICE: Email for price.

Bondoukou is in the north east of Ivory Coast, not far from the border with Ghana. Culturally and historically  it shares many features with the nearby Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana, such as small Akan kingdoms and chieftaincies ruling primarily farming peoples and significant communities of Muslim traders of Malian ancestry. The textiles of this region, as I discussed in my article in Hali magazine a few years ago, now on my website here, share features with both Asante and Ewe cloths from Ghana and with Ivoirian cloths of the Guro and Baule.

Two cloths from the collection of the Museum de Kulturen, Basel, published in the important exhibition catalogue Woven Beauty: The Art of West African Textiles edited by Berhard Gardi (Basel, 2009) illustrate the early use of the same technique.

This cloth, collected in 1840, is the oldest documented kente in the world. Here red, yellow, and blue weft stripes are muted by the white warp. The author notes that it may be attributed to either an Asante or an Ewe weaver – although I would suggest the red edge strip is strongly indicative of an Ewe origin.

This second piece, collected in 1886, is attributed by the author to the Asante on the rather weak grounds that the collection location is nearer Asante than it is to the Ewe. It is closer to our cloth in that indigo and white stripes are used in the warp although the variety of weft colours is still much less, and the pattern layout much less sophisticated. Click on the photos to enlarge. More Bondoukou cloths on our website here.

Basel exhibition - Woven Beauty

The exhibition is displayed over three floors in an annex of the Museum der Kulturen in the medievel old centre of Basel. The main museum buildings are currently closed for a major restructuring designed by Basel's star architects Herzog & de Meuron. The bulk of the exhibition is made up of three large galleries, the first devoted to mainly to Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire, the second to Mali, and the third to Nigeria. In each the complete cloths are fully visible, without glass, hung either on the walls or on central panels. This allows the visitor both to take in the full visual impact of each cloth and to move as close as desired in order to examine pattern details or weave structures. Highlights of the ground floor gallery are the museum's three C19th Ghanaian cloths including one presented to a Basel missionary by the King of Akropong in 1840 that is the earliest documented "kente." Selections from the museum's comprehensive collection of Fulani kaasa and arkilla blankets, along with a modern figurative "couverture personnage" by Oumar Bocoum made up the Malian section on the first floor. The final main gallery showed an interesting range of Nigerian textiles from two rare C19th magenta silk "alaari" wrappers to a shiny rayon shawl woven in Okene early in the C21st. Smaller galleries explained the techniques and materials used in making African textiles, as did a short video that included rare footage of a single-heddle Cameroon ground loom in action. Captions and texts throughout were in English as well as French and German.

Woven Beauty - Basle Exhibition Catalogue now available

The exhibition catalogue of the Basle show is now available in English and German editions. It can be ordered direct from the publishers here or from the museum shop here.There is also a website to accompany the exhibit here.

Edited by Bernhard Gardi the catalogue makes some of his many years of research on Malian textiles and Kerstin Bauer's work on the Dyula of northern Cote D'Ivoire available in English for the first time. It also includes articles and shorter texts by John Picton, Jean Borgatti, Malika Kraamer, Kolado Cisse,Rogier Bedaux and Annette Schmidt and a short chapter on Nigeria by myself. Colour photos show groups of related cloths from several regions.


This is a significant contribution to the field of African textile studies which every collector and scholar with an interest in African arts should buy !