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.

An exceptional silk and cotton Yoruba wrapper.

NW513 -Fine and rare Yoruba women's wrapper cloth dating from late C19th or early C20th with an exceptionally complex and subtle array of warp stripes incorporating magenta trans-Saharan silk "alaari" in an indigo dyed hand spun cotton ground. Unlike strip woven aso oke produced by male weavers, these cloths were woven in two wide panels on an upright single heddle loom by a woman weaver. The use of silk in these women's weave wrappers was an established tradition in the C19th and at the start of the C20th, allowing wealthy women to outshine the plainer blue and white style.

However today it is extremely hard to find surviving examples and almost all those we do see have been patched or repaired. These cloths are not well represented in museum collections and published sources, reflecting their rarity but one piece collected before 1890 and now in the American Museum of Natural History, New York may be seen here. This is a particularly fine completely intact example in excellent condition and with an unusually elaborate configuration of stripes. It would have been an heirloom cloth passed down from mother to daughter over several generations. It retains it's very neat hand stitched seams throughout. Measurements: 78ins x 66ins, 200cm x 168cm

Click on the photos to enlarge.‘ To see this cloth and others in our online gallery of Nigerian women’s weaving click here.

“A Yoruba bride and bridegroom”- vintage postcard circa 1910.

Details: reverse face of a Yoruba agbada embroidery

Two views of the reverse face of the embroidered spiral on the back of an early Yoruba agbada men’s robe at our shop. Most robes of this period are lined in the neck and pocket area with imported pale blue trade cloth, but in this example indigo dyed strip weave asooke is used to rather pleasing effect.

Another Yoruba Weaver.

A second Ifa divination cup with a representation of a treadle loom weaver. Present location unknown. Thanks to Bernhard Gardi for the photographs.

A Yoruba Ifa Diviner’s Bowl.

A few months ago I posted a photo of this unusual object I had noticed pictured in a dealer’s advertisement in an early issue of African Arts magazine. As I noted at the time depictions of any form of artistic activity are extremely rare in Yoruba ritual sculpture and I know of only one other depiction of a weaver –  another Ifa diviner’s bowl, that one showing a woman weaving on a vertical loom, in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin. I have now found the bowl listed in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, online here, from which these three photographs are taken.

As these photos show it is a surprisingly accurate depiction of a Yoruba aso oke weaver at work. Note that it is miscataloged as a “kola nut presentation bowl” – actually it is in the standard form of bowl’s once used by Yoruba Ifa diviners, babalawo, as a prestige holder for the 16 sacred palm nuts that they used to cast divination signs.

Incidentally, the same museum has some very early and interesting West African textiles in it’s collection, many of which may now be viewed online. I will be discussing some of these in  future posts.

Cloth of the month: an early indigo dyed aso oke wrapper.

“AS492 - Exceptional and early indigo strip weave aso oke from the Yoruba region of Nigeria, with a beautiful and subtle effect achieved by pale indigo warp stripes against a dark indigo check background, with fine hand spun cotton used throughout. The slight sheen apparent in the photo is an effect of a recent washing and starching to prepare it for resale in Nigeria, an old tradition that is still maintained in some districts - it is less visible in reality than under the photo lighting. Retains its original hand stitched seams throughout and is in excellent condition. Age circa 1900. Measurements: 80 ins x 56, 203cm x 142cm.” – on our gallery here.

This cloth is called an iro, and would have been worn as a wrap around skirt by a wealthy Yoruba lady on an important occasion such as a wedding or a chieftaincy ceremony. It would have formed part of a set of cloths woven in the same pattern, along with two or three smaller pieces worn as shawl, headtie, and  sometimes a hip cloth.  What makes this an exceptional piece ? To my eye what singles out this cloth is the quality of the indigo dyeing. Very dark, almost black, indigo dyed strip weave cloth was prestigious and expensive because of the high number of immersions in the dye required to achieve that colour. When patterned as a fine check or plaid of lighter blue or white threads, it was known as etu, or guinea fowl, after the speckled plumage of the bird. In the Yoruba aso oke tradition etu formed part of a threefold classification of high status cloths along with magenta silk alaari obtained from the trans-Sahana caravan trade network, and local beige wild silk called sanyan.

On this cloth the small scale check of etu is replaced by a larger check design that was called petuje, that literally translates as “kill and eat guineafowl” but meant “surpasses etu”. Here though it is combined with warp stripes in a beautifully dyed mid-blue. One stripe runs along the selvedge of each strip while a second is set slightly off centre to create the regular layout.

Click on the photos to enlarge. Our galleries of indigo cloths are here and here.

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. 

“Dyeing cotton in indigo, 1946. Igbomina Yoruba, Nigeria.”

The British Museum’s online catalogue has recently been revamped with a much more intuitive and user friendly search procedure that allows rapid access to much of their vast collections, including their photography holdings. A recent browse turned up this fine image of a Yoruba woman indigo dyer at work in the small town of Omu Aran east of Ilorin. This was once a major centre of Igbomina Yoruba women’s weaving and the photograph shows skeins of dyed thread hanging up to dry in the background. It was taken in 1946. Museum reference number is Af,B61.8. The photographer is not listed. Image copyright The Trustees of the British Museum.

Click on the image to enlarge. Visit the British Museum collections database here.

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.

West African Robes–an updated selection of fine early examples

Flowing wide sleeved robes, usually decorated with embroidery, became one of the predominant forms of male prestige dress worn by chiefs and other wealthy men across a large part of West Africa from at least the Sixteenth Century. Their distribution owes much to the diffusion of Islam along key trade routes, although not everyone who wore them was a Muslim. There were a number of mainly quite rare local variants but the predominant type was associated particularly with the C19th Sokoto Caliphate centred on northern Nigeria and primarily the product of Hausa, Nupe and Oyo Yoruba textile workers (cotton spinners, dyers, weavers, tailors, embroiderers, beaters.) The Hausa name for these robes is riga, while among the Yoruba they were called agbada. It is usually not possible to attribute a specific ethnic origin to this type of robe on stylistic grounds alone. Although today they are often still made from hand-woven cloth, the painstaking and beautiful hand embroidery that was used in the past is very rarely seen. Fine old robes have become family heirlooms passed on from father to son and worn with pride at major celebrations.

For descriptions, details etcetera of all these robes please visit our updated gallery here.