Cloth of the month: A rare variant form of Asante adinkra.

ADK071 -   This is the best example I have seen of a very rare variant of woven ground adinkra cloth, as distinct from typical adinkra that is hand stamped  onto machine woven imported fabric.  This type of cloth usually only has two stamped motifs in alternation, and is usually on an orange and red ground, so a white and black ground example such as this with four different motifs is exceptional. The background cloth is composed of an alternation of two different woven strips - the first is plain black and only 5 cm in width, while the second is much wider at 16cm and white with black weft stripes at regular intervals.

Combining the two creates the grid of black squares that frame the stamped motifs. See my recent book: African Textiles: The Karun Thakar Collection (Prestel 2015) for a similar ground cloth with only two motifs.           
In excellent condition. Dates from early to mid C20th. Measurement: 135 ins x 94, 344 cm x 239.  PRICE: Email for price

For more recent acquisitions visit our gallery here.

Asante Silk Kente Cloths

While run of the mill Asante kente cloths woven from rayon thread and mostly dating from the 1970s and after are easy to find, top quality silk cloths woven in the early part of the twentieth century are extremely rare and becoming increasingly difficult to source. The images below show a glimpse of some or our current inventory. Full views and more details on our site at adireafricantextiles.com

Cloth of the month: An Ewe chief’s robe.

E816 - Superb complete example of a rare style of Ewe chief's cloth. In this style the weaver uses the three weft block layout typical of many early Ewe cloths but extends the length of the pattern blocks and alternates them with adjacent strips. More often than not the weft float motifs on these cloths are as here rather blocky chickens executed in orange thread, suggesting that they are all the work of a single weaver or at least a single workshop. For a more varied but incomplete example see Adler & Barnard African Majesty figure 114. A cloth in the same style in the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Dresden, was accessioned in 1910. On our piece the background cloth combines an orange warp with a black weft. In excellent complete condition. Larger than is typical for Ewe cloths. Dates from circa 1900-30. Measurement: 142 inches x 92 ins, 360cm x 234cm

The scanned photos below show the Dresden cloth, which was collected in 1910 by E. Gutschow, who noted: “Kete, country cloth from Keta. This cloth is especially made for rich people. It is artistic work with many designs.” [*]

Ewe men’s cloth, collected by E. Gutschow, 1910 in Keta, Ghana. Museum fur Volkerkunde, Dresden. Accession number 29 744.

*Source: Silvia Dolz “ Textilien aus Westafrika im Museum fur Volkerkunde Dresden” in Abhandlungen und Berichte der Staatlichen Ethnographischen Sammlungen Sachsen (2005).

Click on photos to enlarge. Click here to see E816 on our gallery site.

Two Asante Silk Kente Explored

In today’s post I will be taking a look at two extraordinary Asante silk kente men’s cloths and airing some preliminary thoughts and queries that they suggest in relation to creativity and innovation. The first, above, a predominantly green version of the classic “a thousand shields” design, is from the William Itter Collection in the USA . The second, below, that we found recently and is now in a UK private collection, is a warp stripe patterned cloth called “Ammere Oyokoman”  in the familiar red green and gold colours so favoured by Asante weavers. Both cloths are woven from silk and both can be assumed to date to the first third of the C20th.

Looking first at the green cloth, on first glance it appears to be a standard version of a familiar design, such as the cloth, also from the William Itter Collection, below.

The diagonal grid pattern in the main field of the cloth is made up of small rectangles, recalling the rectangular shape of the wood and leather shield once used by Asante warriors and giving the cloth its name Akyempem, or “a thousand shields.” Incidentally the vast majority of Asante kente cloths were named after the warp stripe pattern, this is an exception. However the technique used is quite different as detail photos show:

Compare the usual version, above, where a supplementary weft float in red and yellow on a blue and white warp striped, warp faced background, is used to create each rectangle in the grid of “shields”, with the one below:

 

Here the entire cloth is weft faced and the grid of red and yellow shields is created as weft faced rectangles using a tapestry weave  technique. I can’t recall another example of a fully weft faced Asante kente and I have certainly never seen tapestry weave used in this way. Also very unusual is the background colour that alternates picks of  yellow green and blue that blend to a muted green overall effect. These threads are not plied together to create a “tweed” in the way that Ewe  weavers sometimes do. We should also note that using this technique to reproduce the design would have been both significantly slower (as more weft threads and hence more weft picks are required) and, because it needed far more thread, considerably more expensive that the standard method.

Turning to the red Oyokoman cloth, here the notable feature is a large array of unique weft float patterns.

The grid framework imposed by the interaction of warp and weft threads naturally leads itself to the creation of diamonds, triangles, and regular stepped patterns and Asante kente weaving exploits these shapes to the full. Here though the master weaver has transcended the limitations of the form by weaving ellipses and even circles, as well as fragmenting the standard diamond shapes to create more complex composite motifs.

While my primary purpose here is simply to register, share, and admire these two wonderful cloths, to me they also raise a number of interesting questions about innovation and creativity in kente weaving and perhaps pose a challenge to any over simplistic contrast between creative expectations expressed in Asante as opposed to  Ewe textiles. Anyone familiar with the two genres is aware that there is a greater variety of styles and techniques apparent in “Ewe kente” than in Asante. As William  Itter noted in our discussion of these two cloths “regarding the controlled or restrained composure of construction and design found in Asante cloth from the more expected/unexpected variety of design in Ewe wraps.”

Here we have seen two superb examples of novel and innovative extension of established techniques that nevertheless remain within  the expected parameters of Asante kente design in terms of cloth layout, overall patterning etcetera.   Such cloths, I would suggest, arise out of a sustained interaction between an experienced master weaver and a exceptionally well informed and perceptive patron, in this context we might suppose an Asante king or senior chief with a deep knowledge and understanding of the existing pattern repertoire who is able to finance and encourage such sophisticated results over a considerable period. This hypothesis would fit with what little we know from the unfortunately rather inadequate ethnographic documentation of Asante kente production for royal patronage in weaving villages such as Bonwire. It would however, in my view, be over simplistic to contrast this with a more open pattern of patronage for Ewe cloths as alone explaining their greater variety. I will return to this complex topic in future posts.

I am very grateful to William Itter for generously sharing his photographs. My thanks also to the owner of the Oyokoman cloth.  Click on the images to enlarge.

Cloth of the Month: A Fante Asafo Frankaa

Asafo112 - Exceptional and interesting mid C20th Fante Asafo flag (frankaa)  illustrating the proverb "the spider (Ananse) was on the stool before God made the world."  Condition: has a number of very small rust holes. Measurement: 53ins x 33 ins, 135cm x 84cm.

Ananse (Anansi) is a key god in the religious mythology of the Akan peoples of Ghana (including the Fante) and related diaspora groups.  He is typically represented, as here, by a spider, the literal translation of the word ananse in the Akan language. Here he is associated with the wisdom and cunning of the gods and by virtue of the depiction seated on a chiefly stool, is claiming that wisdom for the chief. In Akan culture the stool is closely associated with the identity and persona of its owner during his life, and in many cases after the owners death his stool would be painted white and preserved as a focus of libations to the deceased ancestor  in an ancestral “stool room.” It is also the key embodiment of royal and chiefly identity and of royal regalia.

The most interesting feature of this flag is the way in which a specifically local Akan set of iconographic features is combined with other imagery apparently of a more global origin. Below the spider on it’s throne we see a crawling monkey like figure.

The function of this image in the interpretation of the flag remains obscure but in their caption to a very similar flag by the same artist, shown below, Adler and Barnard in their book Asafo ! African Flags of the Fante (Thames and Hudson, 1992, figure 42) suggest that the image is drawn from a popular print based on William Blake’s classic representation of King Nebuchadnezzar.

This is certainly an intriguing idea, and anyone who has listened to the radio in Ghana would not under estimate the extent of reference to even more obscure biblical figures, but I would be curious to see the source of this link in a popular print.

By the same token the depiction of the figure holding up the world may perhaps be drawn from a print depiction of Greek god Atlas.

What are we to make of the similarity between our flag and the one in the Adler collection, below ?

Each flag artist developed a personal style within the overall expectation set by the format. Several of these artists were identified and discussed in the earliest published research on the tradition by Doran Ross in his small book: Fighting with Art: Appliqued Flags of the Fante Asafo (UCLA, 1979) from which most subsequently published information has been drawn. Close attention to genuine flags allows one to identify individual styles and hands, and within that it was not unusual for an artist to repeat a design that either he or his patrons felt had been particularly successful and admired.

Click on the photos to enlarge. Click here to visit our updated gallery of Asafo flags for sale.

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. 

New light on an Ewe chief

In her pioneering book West African Weaving (Duckworth Press, 1975) Venice Lamb published the photograph above (source: Wilmarth family private collection) depicting an Ewe chief with  his court retainers.  She suggested that it showed an Adangbe chief and goes on to describe the features of the cloth that he is wearing as distinctive of what she calls “an earlier type of Adangbe design” , although it is unclear if she has any source for the geographic identification or is basing it only on what she perceived to be the origin of the cloth. She also regarded the picture as dating from the nineteenth century.  This photograph is interesting as there are relatively few early photographs of Ewe chiefs, perhaps because they lacked the elaborate large scale ceremonials and court paraphernalia of the Asante as well as being of lesser political significance in the Gold Coast colony.

For some years I have had a postcard that clearly shows the same man, wearing the same cloth (and the same rather odd crown.) With the photographer identified as “Cliché G.O.” the card is captioned “Palimé (Togo) – Le Chef du village de Kpandu”.  Palimé (Kpalimé) is a town in Togo quite close to the Ghana border, while Kpandu is on the Ghana side on, now on the shore of Lake Volta. Both fall within the more northern cluster of Ewe weaving groups near the town of Hohoe  (that Lamb rather confusingly identifies as the Central Ewe) rather than the more southerly Adangbe or the coastal Anlo.  Whilst there is no guarantee that the caption information is correct (misleading captions on postcards from this period are quite widespread) we can at least note that before the 1914-18 war Togo was a German colony and postcards before that date are captioned in German rather than French.

Malika Kraamer, in her unpublished Phd thesis on Ewe weaving (Colourful changes: two hundred years of design and social history in the hand-woven textiles of the Ewe speaking regions of Ghana and Togo (1800-2000), SOAS, 2005 –now online here) discusses the corpus of early photographs showing Ewe textiles (most drawn from the archives of the Basel and Bremen missions and mainly online here). Among the images that she found with the Bremen Mission is a third photograph of the same chief, again in the same attire. She notes that the same unidentified chief was shown by Lamb and perhaps influenced by her suggests it is a late C19th or early C20th image (at that point it seems she did not have access to the postcard view.)

A couple of weeks ago I was able to buy a group of three photographs from a French source whose grandfather was a trader in Togo in the early part of the twentieth century. One of these photographs, shown below, is a print of the same image as that in the Bremen archive.

Our chief wears his now familiar cloth and crown, but unlike the Bremen copy this print has two captions and, on the reverse, the photographer’s stamp. The first caption, apparently contemporaneous with the print, reads “Fia Dagadu III, Kpandu”, while the second, written in ink, reads “le seigneur de Kpandou, 1929.” On the reverse is the photographer’s stamp “Louis A. Mensah, Photographer.”

In addition to finally identifying this distinguished looking chief, for me these images raise a number of interesting questions about Ewe textile production and use. Why is the same cloth worn in all three photographs ? Is it the only one that he had or his favourite among several ? Might there be other, earlier or later, photographs of him wearing a different cloth ?

What can we say about the cloth itself ? Malika Kraamer identifies the style as atisue based on the short weft faced block structure. As she discussed, both the naming and the design evolution of Ewe textiles were extremely fluid and complex. This type of cloth, in which almost square weft-faced blocks alternate with similarly sized warp-faced sections decorated with supplementary weft float motifs, was certainly among the more elaborate and highly prized types woven in the first half of the twentieth century. A fine example that is on our gallery at the moment is shown below.

Is Venice Lamb correct in attributing this style of cloth primarily to the Adangbe weavers (Kraamer calls the same group Agotime after the main weaving village in the area) ? I would suggest that at present the necessary field research that might perhaps allow us to clearly attribute many of the huge variety of Ewe cloths to specific locales has yet to be carried out, although based on Kraamer’s work some preliminary suggestions for some styles might be possible How did geographical variation interact with individual innovation, workshop styles etcetera ? We simply don’t know.  We do know however that cloths are highly mobile artefacts, with prized pieces being traded over a wide area. Did master weavers whose work was in demand also move to supply wealthy patrons ?

And what about the odd crown ? Both colonial authorities and European traders imported items of royal regalia and prestige goods that they gave or sold to local rulers they wished to influence. The tiger patterned rug in the third photograph clearly falls into this group and I would suggest the crown does also.

Click on the photos to enlarge. Click here to view our current selection of Ewe textiles.

Cloth of the month: an unusual Ewe chief’s robe

E787 - Exceptional Ewe chief’s cloth in superb, complete, condition. This unique cloth provides a textbook exemplar of the way in which an Ewe master weaver can constrain his use of colours and patterns to only a small subset of their available repertoire and then explore and improvise on the possibilities offered to create a new and distinctive design. Red and then yellow predominate on a dark green background. Weft faced blocks alternate with a double zigzag supplementary weft float pattern.

This pattern is subtly modified in a few places or substituted in others by a wider single zigzag in varying colours, note for example in the central strip of the detail below. The colours of the weft faced blocks are varied and occasional pattern changes introduced within them.

The result is not only a unique pattern but an exploration of similarity and difference to beautiful effect.

Dates from circa 1930-50. Condition: Excellent, complete, no patches or stains. Size: 119 ins x 80, 329cm x 205, PRICE: Email us for price

Click on the photos to enlarge. For our current updated selection of Ewe cloths click here.

“African Rulers Here”

Press photo titled “African Rulers Here” 27.9. 1948

Caption: “A party of African rulers, here for the African Conference opening on Wednesday at Lancaster house, arrived at Euston this evening. (L- R) Essuma Jahene and Sir Tsibu Daku.”

"Fanti Women in Full Dress"

Vintage postcard: "Fanti Women in Full Dress" Photographer Jacob Vitta, Takwa, Ghana, circa 1910

Looking back at some exceptional Ewe cloths from our archive.

As I look back on some of the more unusual and significant pieces from our archive of sold cloths I am struck once again by the diversity and sophistication of the finest Ewe weaving. As I noted in an earlier post I have been assembling a selection of images of Ewe cloths on my Pinterest page here. This project is continuing and I will be adding other pages looking at other major groups of West African textiles over the coming months. Visit Pinterest for the full group but here are some highlights.

Ewe men's cloth, early C20th: Usually these weft faced cloths are only red, blue and white, but on this one the weaver went wild with new colours. The only example I have seen like it. Now in a private collection.

Ewe men's cloth, circa 1900: the weaver combines a supplementary floating warp and a floating weft to create the tooth-like pattern in the black squares. This is the only time I have seen this rare technique on a weft-faced cloth. Now in private collection.

Ewe men's cloth, early C20th: Silk weft motifs on cotton ground, the black dyed cotton in the weft stripes had perished. Now in private collection.

Ewe men's cloth, early C20th: On this exceptional cloth the weaver has placed the supplementary weft floats on top of the weft faced blocks rather than between them as is typical. Now in the Metropolitan Museum.

Click on the photos to enlarge. To see our current stock of Ewe cloths click here.

Cloth of the month: a remarkable mixed pattern Ewe kente

Ewe767 - Highly unusual cloth in which a master weaver has used a virtuoso display of complex and finely controlled supplementary weft float motifs to unite a varied group of different warp stripe patterned and coloured strips. Motifs include two men in a canoe, a man with a caged bird, crocodiles, chiefs with umbrellas, various complex multibladed ceremonial swords etcetera. Cloths with this level of decoration were extremely expensive to commission and would only have been worn by the wealthiest men. Dates from circa 1930-50s. Condition excellent. Size: 118 ins x 74, 300cm x 188.

Click on the photos to enlarge..

Please visit our updated gallery to see some of our current stock of Ewe kente cloths here.