Mossi Indigo Shawls

Rare variant style of vintage Mossi indigo shawls from Burkina Faso with 10 inch long braided fringes and tie dye patterning. There is a deluge of mostly very mediocre indigo dyed cloths coming out of Burkina at the moment but careful searching can uncover some gems amongst them. Message me for sizes and prices.

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.

The original work wear - Mossi Indigo Cloths from Burkina Faso

The Mossi are the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso, numbering some five to six million people. In the centuries preceding colonisation by the French at the end of the C19th the Mossi had used their skill as cavalry to maintain a large and powerful empire. Both weaving and indigo dyeing flourished in the region. Today vintage Mossi indigo cloths, woven from soft handspun cotton and faded through years of heavy use to a variety of subtle shades, are in great demand. 

 

“Weaving is an ancient tradition in the area now inhabited by the Mossi. Several of the original clans include stories of weavers in their myths of origin, and among clans near Guilongou, between Ouagadougou and Kaya, traditions state that the founding ancestor was a weaver who descended to earth on the threads of his warp carrying a wooden mask.

Working exclusively during the dry season, usually in large workshops that are organized and financed by merchants with adequate capital to purchase homespun or factory-spun thread, young men from 10 to 30 years of age produce vast quantities of plain, white cotton bands on horizontal narrow-warp looms.” Source: Dr. Christopher Roy, “The Art of Burkina Faso” Art & Life in Africa, University of Iowa.

Mossi indigo dyers, vintage postcard, circa 1910.

Working with partners in Burkina Faso we collect well used cloths from Mossi villages, then carefully select, sort, and wash them.  The colour of these pieces is fast and will not bleed on further washing or handling. We reject inferior recently made pieces or cloths aged artificially as the weave quality and handling are unsatisfactory. Our customers have used our Mossi indigos as shawls,scarves and throws, to tailor jackets and waistcoats, for upholstery, cushions, and a variety of other interiors projects. Wholesale prices are available on request.

At the moment in the shop we have a small group of beautiful hand made cushions backed with vintage indigo dyed French linen.

Cushions made from Mossi indigo cloths (not from us) can be seen in the June 2014 issue of World of Interiors below.

To view some of our current stock, along with other vintage West African indigo textiles on our website click here. Click on the photos to enlarge.

West African Robes: some early photos of Nigerian robes

To mark the recent update of the robe section of our gallery, today I am posting a selection of early images of this style of robe in use. Although this style of robe was made in and closely associated with the nineteenth century Sokoto Caliphate in north Nigeria, taking in Hausa, Nupe and northern Yoruba peoples, such was it’s prestige that it was traded and worn across a much wider expanse of West Africa.

Photographer unknown. Lagos, Nigeria, Circa 1890.

Photographer N. Walwin Holm or J.A. C. Holm, circa 1900-10. The Alake of Abeokuta.

Photographer unknown, Cameroun, early C20th.

Photographer unknown, Burkina Faso, early C20th. the Moro Naba, king of the Mossi, Ouagadougou.

Photographer unknown, early C20th, Tuareg Chief, Zinder, Niger.

Photographer unknown, early C20th. Hausa dance troupe, northern Nigeria.

Photographer unknown, early C2oth, Shendam, east central Nigeria.

Click on the photos to enlarge. Please visit our robe gallery to see our current stock and for more information.

Mossi indigo wrapper cloths

Indigo has been on my mind a lot recently. I finally got around to reading Jenny Balfour-Paul’s classic book Indigo in the Arab World (Routledge, 1997) and ten days or so ago I returned from a brief trip to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso where I had passed an enjoyable week looking around for more Mossi indigo wrappers. These soft faded old cloths are among the best sellers in our shop (cushions made from them can be seen in the Andalusian estate on the cover of October 2012 issue of World of Interiors.)  Since then the post from Burkina has been bringing large bags of the cloths in their various shades, recalling Balfour-Paul’s wonderful list  - in eighteenth century Europe “dyers classified indigo colours into thirteen separate shades, beginning with the lightest: ‘milk-blue, pearl-blue, pale-blue, flat-blue, middling-blue, sky-blue, queen’s blue, turkish-blue, watchet-blue, garter-blue, mazareen-blue, deep-blue, and very deep or navy-blue (or ‘infernal blue’).” (page 117.)

On our cloths it is years of rigorous hand washing and drying under the fierce Saharan sun that have created the range of shades rather than the initial dyeing.

In the mid-C20th postcard above the cones of thatch cover the indigo dye pits to maintain them at the correct temperature. Two indigo wrappers may be seen hanging at the right of the figures.

Click on the images to enlarge.

For some of the Mossi wrappers and other of our vintage indigo cloths for sale click here.

Indigo in West Africa – an introduction

Dried balls of indigo on sale in the market at Segou, Mali, early C20th. Vintage postcard, circa 1910, authors collection.

Indigo was the foundation of numerous textile traditions throughout West Africa. For centuries before the introduction of synthetic dyes the ability to transform everyday white cotton into prized deep blue cloth was a mysterious and highly valuable skill passed on by specialist dyers from generation to generation. From the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara to the grassland kingdoms of Cameroon, indigo cloth signified wealth, abundance and fertility. A century ago blue and white striped cloth was the normal attire across a vast area from Senegal to Cameroon, while numerous traditions of "shibori" type resist pattern dyeing flourished. Indigo in West Africa was obtained from local plant sources, either indigofera or lonchocarpus cyanescans. Transforming the raw material into a successful dye vat was a complex process requiring great expertise and liable to unexplained failure. Inevitably it was usually surrounded with ritual prescriptions and prohibitions. The primary ingredients were dried balls of crushed leaves from indigo bearing plants, ash, and the dried residue from old vats. Cloth had to be dipped repeatedly in the fermented dye, exposed briefly to the air, then re-immersed. The number of dippings, and the strength and freshness of the dye determined the intensity of the resulting colour.

A rare early C20th image of Yoruba women dyers with their clay dye pots. Vintage postcard, circa 1910, authors collection.

Appropriately it was women who dyed cloth with indigo in most areas, with the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Manding of Mali (especially the Soninke /Malinke) particularly well known for their expertise. Yoruba dyers paid tribute to a patron deity, Iya Mapo to ensure the success of the complex dye process.

Malinke dyers" old postcard, photograph taken by Edmund Fortier in the Futa Jallon region of Guinee in 1905. Note the use of a half buried pot as the dye vessel, and, at the left, a woman beating folded cloth to impart a glazed sheen.

Among the Hausa, where the export trade in prestige textiles was highly organised, male dyers working at communal dye pits were the basis of the wealth of the ancient city of Kano.

Hausa male dyers in Kano, circa 1950. Note the concrete dyepits sunk in the ground. Vintage postcard, authors collection.

After the dyed cloth had dried it was customary to beat the fabric repeatedly with wooden beaters, which both pressed the fabric and imparted a shiny glaze. In some areas additional indigo paste was beaten into the cloth at this stage, subsequently rubbing off on the skin of the wearer in a much desired effect.

Cloth beaters at work in the village of Kura near Kano, 2005. Author’s photo.

Today synthetic indigo and brightly coloured imported fabrics have largely displaced natural indigo except in remote regions and only in a few areas can one still see indigo cloths in regular use. For many cloths like those in our galleries dating from the early to mid-twentieth century represent the last remainders of a long tradition. Elsewhere though natural indigo continues to be used, for example by Dogon women in Mali and Mossi and Dioula in Burkina Faso. We have two selections of indigo dyed textiles, in our indigo gallery and our Nigerian adire resist dyed gallery, and other indigo dyed cloths available in our Francophone and Nigerian women's galleries.