Wodaabe Men’s Festival Attire, Niger.

Photo taken from the book “Nomads who cultivate beauty” by Mette Bovin (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2001) in my view the most interesting of many books on the Wodaabe nomads of Niger. Bovon notes that this picture was taken in 1975 by a local photographer Yacoubou in Diffa. She noted – ‘Young men nowadays laugh when they see this photo, and comment “How old-fashioned they look, the mirrors are too big and hanging too low. Our fashion today is much smarter, more chic. But look, all three men’s faces are pretty.”’

AGB110 - Fine example of a open-sided hand embroidered tunic of a type worn by young men of the nomadic Wodaabe people of Niger for certain important ceremonial occasions. The embroidery patterns are named after aspects of nomadic lifestyle such as the layout of the camp site, and are executed on a backing cloth of very narrow (1cm) width strip woven cloth, the most expensive and prestigious fabric available. It was woven by Hausa weavers in the vicinity of Kano in northern Nigeria for sale to the nomadic peoples of the Sahel and Sahara to the north.

The tunics were worn over a skirt fashioned from a wrapped goat skin and were adorned with hanging jewellery and other finery in an effort to draw the eye as the man danced in a row among the other young men of his clan. See the photgraph at the foot of this page taken from the book “Nomads who cultivate beauty” by Mette Bovin (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2001). A notable feature of this example is the asymmetric layout of the embroidery on the reverse of the robe. Wodaabe tunic of this quality are now becoming rather hard to source and increasingly rare. Condition: excellent. Age: circa mid C20th. Measures: 67 inches x 18 (+ arms), 170cm x 46. PRICE: US$2175.

“Arkilla kunta / arkilla kerka: patterns” by Bernhard Gardi

“Written descriptions of looms, weaving technologies, and their histories often prove difficult for both author and reader.” Doran Ross. 1998. Wrapped in Pride: Ghanian Kente and African American Identity. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. p.75

These three motifs (figs.1-3) from an arkilla kunta-blanket are of outstanding finesse, quality and of a certain age. The vegetable colours have not faded and match very well, the yarn had been finely spun with great regularity. As arkilla kunta-blankets are very rare, their ethno-historical background is of interest.

The arkilla kunta is the old form of the better known arkilla kerka woven by the maabuube, the weavers of the Peul in Mali. Something like 200 years ago two groups of people left the Upper Delta of the river Niger in c0entral Mali and eventually settled down south of Gao in today’s Republic of Niger. These two small groups are known as Kurtey and Wogo. Their language is Songhay. The Kurtey claim their descent from the Peul, the Wogo see their mythical origin in a small place called Tindirma south west of Tombouctou.

Among other Malian traditions, the Wogo kept a specific symbol for their marriages until the early 1960s, namely this huge tent-like blanket kunta being completely woven with sheep wool. Not so the Kurtey; they had no such arkilla-blankets.

Literally, arkilla has an Arabic root meaning ‘mosquito net’.

There are significant differences between an arkilla kunta and an arkilla kerka. A complete kunta should have five rather wide strips (32 cm), the fifth or lowest one being simpler woven than the other four. [Fig.4] A kunta is tent-shaped. Hung over the bed it gave warmth and shelter during the cold season. Made of 95-100% wool the whole blanket is brittle and much rougher to touch than a kerka. A complete kerka should have six strips (22 cm wide), the sixth or lowest one being simpler woven than the other five. [Fig.5] In some areas there is a seventh strip in black and white called sigaretti to hang the kerka as a curtain in front of the bed. Well over 50% of a kerka (including the warp) is made with cotton yarn.

However, their ‘look’ has striking similarities. For instance, all the motifs and weaving techniques are the same, and on both types of arkilla we have a comparable rhythm of successive plain weave (cannyudi), weft float patterns (cubbe) and patterns in tapestry weave (tunne). While a kerka has just three dominant weft patterns with white tapestry on red grounds – the largest one being in the centre of the blanket - a kunta has four of them. And as a kerka of the first quality has twice six rather narrow weft float patterns, a kunta has five of them, the largest one being in the centre of the blanket.

On both, kunta and kerka, there are two major motifs as eye catchers in tapestry weave: the lewruwal (moon) and the gite ngaari (eyes of the bull), as the Peul say.

And for those readers who have followed us so far: a kerka has the lewruwal motif (moon) in the geometric centre - whereas a kunta has its lewruwal to the left and right of the centre – the centre itself being decorated by a huge diamond shaped pattern in weft float.

The moon motif lewruwal may be called differently in some regions – namely tiide eda: the forehead of the wild buffalo.

When we were in Wogo country in 1974 (Renée Boser-Sarivaxévanis and myself), we acquired three kunta for the Museum der Kulturen Basel. At that time the owners of the blankets or the villagers around there did not know the names of the patterns anymore. Names given to us were untranslatable for the linguists that we consulted in Niamey. Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, the only anthropologist who describes an arkilla kunta, states that most names of the patterns are unknown to the weavers and to the old people in general or of unknown origin altogether (1969:108-109). As we did not stay long, our field data are poor.

When in Mali later, between 1978 and 1982, I put together some important documentation on the arkilla kerka - blankets that were still in use then. So all the terminology given here is in Fulfulde (the language of the Peul).

It is one thing to know the names of the patterns and it is another one to know how they are made. It is easier to understand these huge marriage blankets arkilla when looking at them through the eyes of a weaver – technically.

Looking back again at the first three photos above, Fig.1 shows the motif lewruwal (moon) with two stars kode to the left and right. Usually, there are four, six or eight stars. ‘Moon’ and ‘star’ are tunne, woven in the technique of tapestry. The two diamond shaped motifs above and below the lewruwal are called jowal meaning ‘rhomb’. As the two jowal are woven in a special kind of a weft float (in French “broché”) and not in tapestry they have another technical name, namely cukke. So, besides plain weave (cannyudi) we have three tunne (1 moon and 2 stars in tapestry) and two cukke. That is how the weaver thinks. After all, for him the weaving of an arkilla is a mnemotechnical challenge. “What I weave”, a weaver would say, “I have found with my fathers.”

That means, he repeats what he has learned. He doesn’t care whether a pattern is called ‘ears of the second wife’, ‘teeth of an old woman’ (black-white-black in reference to gaps between the teeth), ‘hoofs of a gazelle’, ‘upturned calabash’ or ‘tracks of a rabbit in the sand’. He is the artisan who masters the techniques and he rather thinks in terms of quality of the yarn, the colours, or his deal with the bride’s father and the bride’s mother who cooks his meals.

He will equally think about his salary: the more tunne he weaves and the finer and more eye catching they are the more additional income (cattle, millet, cash, kola nuts – a mix of all of them) he generates.

Arkilla kunta weavers were real master weavers. It would be wrong to think that their weaving was just repetitive. Now, in writing this contribution, I went through all the data I have on kunta blankets – 16 altogether – discovering, that no two kunta are exactly alike. There is a great range in designing the over all aspect of the blanket just in varying distances between patterns, the size of motifs and the combination of cukke, cubbe and tunne.

Fig.2 in fact is another jowal (rhomb), however of another kind than the two small jowal on fig.1. The weaver will call it cubbe, as the pattern is woven in weft float (in French “lancé”). This very cubbe here was probably in the middle of a kunta although, as it is rather small I am not quite sure.

The twisted fringes in yellow and red are a decoration. However, they serve as an important help to knot the newly woven strips together so that at last – after four or more weeks of weaving – the whole surface or the kunta can be admired before the sewing together of the strips starts. The very same fringes are on the kerka-blankets, too.

Fig.3 is another tunne extremely finely woven. It is called fedde (fed = finger), as all the weft threads forming the tapestry pattern have to be pushed through the warp threads with the fingers during the weaving process. On most kunta-blankets there are four weft stripes with the fedde-motif embracing several kode (stars) and a cubbe (woven in weft float pattern).

Throughout the old world – Middle East, North Africa, Europe – tapestry weaving was done by women on an upright loom. Not so in Mali: the Fulani of the Upper Delta of the Niger are an exception to the rule. Tapestry weaving is done on their horizontal treadle loom with one pair of heddles, and the weavers are men. That makes tapestry weaving interesting. It even seems that tapestry is a cultural marker, that wherever we find tapestry on West African textiles, there are Peul/Fulani around or the weaver has learned his profession with a maabo-weaver (singular of maabuube).

So, let us have a second look at that lewrual-moon-fig.1: it is a rather rectangular moon. In this case, all together, there are seven concentric layers or colours: light indigo blue, white, red, yellow, light indigo blue again, red, and white/blue. We can compare this kunta lewruwal with a kerka lewruwal (fig.6) having equally seven layers. This is just one way of talking about quality. The more layers, the more work involved, the better quality it is.

The striking difference, however, are the ‘antennas’ sticking out at the kunta lewruwal-fig.1. repeated below On kerka-blankets there are never such antennas. On arkilla kunta sometimes … or even often - but it depends where. These ‘antennas’ might exactly be one of these details a master weaver plays with and which might be in relation with the arranged ‘salary’.

On fig.1 we have 11 ‘antennas’ – quite a lot. Of the three kunta in Basel only one has such antennas, namely 10, on red ground. The other two have such ‘antennas’ on the smaller lewruwal which are towards both ends of the blanket on yellow ground, having 5 or 7 ‘antennas’ only.

That logic seems to be systematic: Either a kunta has its ‘antennas’ on red ground or they are on yellow ground. Not both together. Or there are no ‘antennas’ at all. And as the lewruwal on red ground is more to the centre of the blanket it is bigger and more important. Of the 14 kunta in my file where such details are visible only 3 have ‘antennas’ on red ground.

Maybe this is just a European approach: counting and quantifying for lack of other data. However, including other factors I have the feeling that the lewruwal motif on red ground with ‘antennas’ means ‘old’ … whatever that means. I know photos taken in Ghana in 2013 showing kaasa-blankets (the ordinary 6 striped woollen blankets of the Peul in Mali) in a ritual. As the patterns of the kaasa-blankets have changed considerably during the 20^th century, it can be said that this very kaasa was woven well before 1930. That means the woollen blanket was kept in the tropics safely for over 80 years. The same is very possible for this piece of arkilla kunta-weaving.

Only one arkilla kunta-blanket is dated and has full information: the one at the National Museum of Mali, Bamako (inv.no. 2002.13.1) woven 1968. It is maybe the last one ever made.

So far, I have found no arkilla blanket in a museum collection dated before 1900. We have, however, one archaeological cotton cloth from the Dogon, dated to the 17th/18th century containing over 20 patterns strangely resembling the lewruwal motif of an arkilla kunta (fig.8 above - National Museum of Mali, Bamako 92-05-390 = H 71-2). Isn’t this an amazing cloth! It was found in a cave where all the human remains were female. So this is a female cotton shawl or wrapper. Originally, it had at least five strips.

Among the important corpus of published Tellem textiles (500 pieces, see Rita Bolland 1991) dating from the 11^th to the 15^th century, patterns with supplementary weft threads (“lancé” in French, cubbe in Fulfulde) go back to the 11^th century. In rare cases there are even tapestry patterns in wool. Are all of them imported textiles from North Africa? Probably yes – although there might be just one exception (C 19-1, see Bolland 1993: 174, fig.32). In any case, fig.8 is the oldest tapestry pattern known for sure and woven on a West African treadle loom with one pair of heddles.

We have come a long way from arkilla kunta and Wogo to arkilla kerka and Peul to tapestry weaving in cotton found in a cave in Dogon country and going back 200 to 300 years. In order to end this story, I would like to invite the reader to come with me to Ghana. There, the most sacred and the most venerated cloths are called nsaa. Sacred drums or horns with human jaws sewn on them may be wrapped in nsaa. Dead people before burying are put on their bed, the room being decorated with nsaa. The first textile layer in a palanquin in which Akan chiefs are carried around is often nsaa. Although several authors had mentioned the importance of these nsaa- (or nsa-) blankets (Rattray, Ross, others) no researcher really followed up that topic. Except, maybe textile researcher Brigitte Menzel. “They are not only attributed protective but also healing properties”, she writes, and she carries on, “my aged Asante informants were unanimous of the opinion that this woollen textile, which they all called nsaa, is the highest ranking of all traditional textiles…“ And “in the olden days“ – 40 head loads each containing 2000 cola nuts or five healthy male slaves were paid up north in Salaga or Dagomba for such a nsaa. Although the word nsaa embraces all kind of woollen blankets from Mali Menzel stresses that nsaa means mainly: arkilla kunta … made 1000 km to the north, south of Gao (Menzel 1990:83).

We all know that the Golden Stool is the symbol and “national soul” of the Asante, as Rattray puts it. When the Golden Stool “was borne”, he tells us, it was “sheltered from the sun by the great umbrella, made of material called in Ashanti nsa (camel’s hair and wool). This umbrella was known throughout Ashanti as Katamanso (the covering of the nation).” (Rattray 1927:130) [Please note: “camel’s hair” is wrong. It is always sheep wool however of mediocre quality. But sheep it is.]

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Captions

Fig.1 see text

Fig.2 see text

Fig.3 see text

Fig.4 Arkilla kunta-blankets in the exhibition of the National Museum of Niger, Niamey in the late 1960s. One kunta is hanging over the bed, two others are spread on the bed and on the floor (Photo by Pablo Toucet, Photocard, coll. B.G.)

Fig.5 Arkilla kerka hanging in front of the bed. The centre of the blanket with the lewruwal motif is to the right. The white tapestry patterns on red ground to the left are called gite ngaari: ‘eyes of the bull’ (N’Gouma 1982, photo B.G.).

Fig.6 Central motif lewruwal (moon) of an arkilla kerka, Mali (1980, photo B.G.)

Fig.7 A = fig.1 Duncan Clarke’s lewruwal on red ground

Fig.7 B Lewruwal on red ground with 10 ‘antennas’, 4 stars. Museum der Kulturen Basel: III 20456

Fig.7 C Lewruwal on red ground with 11 ‘antennas’, 4 stars. National Museum of Niger, Niamey.

Fig.7 D Museum der Kulturen Basel: III 20462 – lewruwal on red ground without ‘antennas’. Eight stars. Below: lewruwal on yellow ground with 6 ‘antennas’.

Fig.7 E Museum der Kulturen Basel: III 20455 – lewruwal with 7 ‘antennas’ on yellow ground.

Fig.8 Single motif in tapestry on an archaeological cloth, Dogon 17./18.Jh. (National Museum of Mali, Bamako : MNM 92-05-390=H 71-2-II)

Fig.9 kunta in Ghana: nsaa (Photo: Werner Forman 1964, published by Duncan Clarke. 1997: The Art of African Textiles, p. 68, 69)

Fig.10 A maabo weaver at work. To weave a weft pattern with supplementary weft (cubbe) he uses a wooden board to count the warp threads. Below to the right we see two stars tunne on white ground (N’Gouma, 1982, photo B.G.).

Quoted literature

Bolland, Rita. 1991. Tellem Textiles. Archaeological Finds from Burial Caves in Mali’s Bandiagara Cliff. Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam; Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde; Leiden; Institut des Sciences Humaines, Bamako; Musée National du Mali, Bamako. With contributions by Rogier M.A. Bedaux and Renée Boser-Sarivaxévanis

Menzel, Brigitte. 1990. Textiles in Trade in West Africa. Presented at the Textile Society of America, Biennial Symposium. September 14-16, 1990. Washington, D.C. Proceedings of the Textile Society of America, pp. 83-93

Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre. 1969. Système des relations économiques et sociales chez les Wogo (Niger).Université de Paris. Mémoires de l’Institut d’Ethnologie III. Institut d’Ethnologie Musée de l’Homme.

Rattray, Capt. R. S. 1927: Religion and Art in Ashanti. Oxford, The Clarendon Press.

Ross, Doran H. 1998. Wrapped in Pride. Ghanian Kente and African American Identity. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Coming this week: Arkilla kunta / arkilla kerka: patterns – by Bernhard Gardi

This week I am excited to be bringing you the first ever guest contribution to our blog, an extended consideration of the patterns in wool blankets from Mali written by eminent Swiss scholar Bernhard Gardi. He was for many years the curator of the Africa Department of the Museum der Kulturen, Basel and is the author of numerous book and articles on  African textile related topics. Among these are the catalogues of two of the important exhibitions that he curated  Woven Beauty: The Art of African Textiles (2009, Christoph Merian Verlag) and Le Boubou: C’est Chic (2000, Christoph Merian Verlag).

In his post Bernhard will look at woven patterns in a rare type of wool blanket called an arkilla kunta, shown below (MKB_III_20462 –click photo to enlarge)

and he will explore the similarities and differences with the much more common arkilla kerka (below, click to enlarge, photo by Bernhard Gardi, 1979.)

A fine Arkilla Kerka from Mali

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After a special request by Bernhard Gardi for some wool cloths on the blog after he complained “always kente kente kente”, today we look at a notably fine wool and cotton wedding hanging from Mali, of the type called arkilla kerka.

In his catalogue Woven Beauty: The Art of West African Textiles (Basel, 2009 – incidentally the best book published on African Textiles) Gardi notes:

“The kerka is the ‘mother of all arkilla.’ They are no longer produced today. A kerka consists of six patterned strips, occasionally a seventh strip, striped black and white and called sigaretti (from the French ‘cigarette’), is added and used for hanging up the blanket. The white sections and the warp are made of cotton, the rest is wool. Black is never applied, only dark indigo blue. A kerka blanket of the highest quality requires between 25,000 and 30,000 metres of hand-spun yarn.”

This example was collected in Bamako by an English family in the 1950s and is now in the Musée di Quai Branly, Paris. It is an old well used piece with exceptionally fine weaving. Gardi commented “There are very nice noppi nawliraaBe motives, 'ears of the co-wive'. Looks very much as woven from a weaver who was equally weaving arkilla jenngo blankets. That means, that kerka does not come from the Guimballa area (East of Lake Debo) but from Niafunke or further North-West.”

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Interesting new book on Nigerian dress traditions…

Published in Nigeria in 2011 but new to me this is a substantial (600 + pages) volume that explores dress traditions across numerous ethnic groups in Nigeria in considerable detail. The author Dani Lyndersay, a theatre studies expert, lived in Nigeria for many years and has a Phd from the University of Ibadan. She draws on both her own field and archive research and a pretty thorough overview of the literature illustrated by numerous line drawings. These drawings are in may cases quite detailed and make up for the limited and rather poorly reproduced photographs (often a problem with books published in Nigeria.) There is much new and interesting information here – 28 pages on the dress of the Kanuri, for example.

The book is not listed on Amazon but I did find it at an online seller here. I bought my copy at SOAS bookshop in London, who no doubt could obtain more.

Studio portrait, Mauretania.

Caption “Pullo debbo, Muritani” – Fulani woman, Mauretania.

from “Fulanitube” on Facebook.

Wodaabe–“nomads who cultivate beauty”

Photo taken from the book “Nomads who cultivate beauty” by Mette Bovin (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2001) in my view the most interesting of many books on the Wodaabe nomads of Niger. Bovon notes that this picture was taken in 1975 by a local photographer Yacoubou in Diffa. She noted – ‘Young men nowadays laugh when they see this photo, and comment “How old-fashioned they look, the mirrors are too big and hanging too low. Our fashion today is much smarter, more chic. But look, all three men’s faces are pretty.”’

A fine Wodaabe ceremonial tunic, Niger

Superb ceremonial tunic from the Wodaabe people of Niger. The Wodaabe are a nomadic cattle herding branch of the Fulani (or in French, Peul) people who are widely distributed across the Sahel of West Africa. The Wodaabe are well known for their spectacular annual ceremonies in which young men wearing thick face makeup dance in a row displaying their beauty to admiring women from the rival clan. These tunics are open-sided and worn over a plain leather wrapped skirt. More recent examples are usually made from cheaper imported cloth and embroidered in harsher colours, but this piece, dating from around 1960-70 is a great exemplar of a style that is now becoming very hard to collect. The designs, which include motifs alluding to aspects of nomadic life such as the layout of camps, are hand embroidered on a strip woven cloth ground. On this piece it is made up of the most expensive and most prestigious strip cloth - very narrow width strips woven by Hausa weavers in the vicinity of Kano in Nigeria specifically for sale to the desert peoples to their north such as the Tuareg and Wodaabe. A distinctive feature of this tunic is the central red stripe embroidered with a different design. Condition excellent. Measurement: 17 inches (plus 18 "sleeves") x 52 inches, 44 cm (plus 46 "sleeves")x 133 cm.

Click photos to enlarge. More information on our gallery here.

An exceptional Dogon uldebe blanket

Superb early example of a style of nine strip blanket with nine rows of pattern that is called Uldebe among the Dogon, where it has an important and very specific role in the funerary and post funeral rites of high status men and women. According to Bernhard Gardi (Dogon, ed. Helene Leloup, 2011, page 180) each family would have one uldebe blanket that was used to wrap the body of any important deceased man or woman during funeral ceremonies, but then, rather than being buried with the corpse as was typical of funerary cloths in West Africa, retrieved and displayed in the courtyard of the deceased for six days as a focal point for homage to the dead. A very specific variant of the blue and white cotton blankets that were used throughout much of Mali, uldebe (also known as gamba) were woven only in a few villages in the district of Pinia. A Uldebe blanket was the sole textile included in the recent Dogon exhibition in the Musee Quai Branly, Paris.

However this particular cloth was collected in a remote village in northern Ghana where Malian blue and white blankets have been prized in Ghana for centuries and were used for prestige display be chiefs (and therefore would not have been used at funerals !) This is an exceptionally fine and early example, circa 1920-40s, woven from hand spun thread throughout, and in excellent condition. More ordinary uldebe blankets are fairly easy to obtain and indeed still in use in Mali, but an intact example of this age, quality, and condition is very rare. Click here to see this cloth and others in our online gallery.

Modern uldebe used to receive tribute offerings at the installation of a hogon or medicinal specialist. Photo by Inogo Dolo, 2012. More details here

Rare image of a Fulbe elder (not Dogon) wearing an uldebe cloth as a prestige wrapper, early C20th. (vintage postcard, published by Larger, author’s collection.)

Installing a Hogon in Sangha, Mali, 2012

Hogon are medicinal specialists, herbalists and healers among the Dogon people of Mali. These photos, from a set recently posted on Facebook, shows views of the installation of two hogon in the village of Sangha, one of the best known and most frequently visited Dogon villages. The great quantity and variety of locally made textiles on display provide a superb insight into the use of hand-woven cloth in the region today.

In the photo above a mud brick house has been draped in cloths to serve as a backdrop for the event. Brightly coloured strip weave blankets of the types that can be found in markets throughout the Sahel provide dramatic blocks of colour. Most of these cloths would have been the work of Mabuube weavers, a weavers ‘clan’ attached to Fulani families. In between is a darker row (click the photo to enlarge) made up of blue and white prestige blankets called uldebe. These cloths, in which nine strips are matched to nine blocks of weft designs, are of considerable prestige and ritual significance among the Dogon. Finally, stacked at the stop are wheels of plain white cotton cloth strips, an ancient form of wealth throughout the Sahel, that today form the basis for either indigo resist dyed wrappers of for bogolan mud dyed fabrics for sale to tourists.

The hogon is seated on an uldebe cloth against a backdrop of multi-coloured tapie blankets, with more wheels of white cotton cloth at his side. He wears a beautiful indigo dyed robe, and on his head, a turban of very narrow strip indigo cloth most likely imported from Nigeria. At his feet another uldebe serves as a receptacle for gifts.

A women celebrant in her best outfit wears another blanket, an updated black and yellow version of an old blue and white design,  as a prestige shawl.

All photos by Inogo Dolo, reproduced with permission.

Fulani Woman by Monique Cras, Africaniste painter

Watercolour, Femme Foulah – Dalaba, Guinee, 1939, by Monique Cras (Christie’s Amsterdam, 24/5/2000 lot 173. )

Monique Cras (1910-2007) is one of my favourite artists of the French and Belgian Africaniste school, notable for her sensitive studies of both men and women in French colonial Africa. I will post a larger group of images of her work soon. Click on images to enlarge.

Vintage postcard, circa 1920, publisher & photographer unknown, author’s collection. Fulani or Peul woman.