Weft-faced Ewe cloths, Ghana/Togo
Yoruba adire cloths, Nigeria
Indigo striped strip weaves, Ivory Coast.
Mostly blankets from Mali.
Mossi indigo cloths, Burkina Faso.
Yoruba indigo cloths, Nigeria.
Ewe men’s cloths, Ghana/Togo.
Dioula and Bondoukou men’s cloths, Ivory Coast.
For other views of these cloths please visit our website.
AGB102 - Much prized by lovers of indigo, these smock-like robes were worn by hunters and other senior men in the forested central and northern regions of the Benin Republic. Hand-tailored from indigo hand spun cotton thread strip weaves with a plain indigo in a lighter shade lining the shoulders and hem.
Eight to ten years ago there were quite a few of these around in Accra but more recently they have become rather scarce and prices for rare examples as good as this have risen accordingly. Condition: small patched repair to back of "skirt" and minor marks but good overall. Age: circa mid C20th. Measures: 43 inches x 57, 110cm x 145. More details here
Photo above is a detail from the wonderful book Chasseurs Nago: Royaume de Bante by photographer Jean-Dominique Burton published by Fondation Zinsou.
Click on the photos to enlarge. More robes here and more indigo here.
Textiles of southern and
eastern Africa
14 February – 21 April 2013
Free
“The rich fabric of African printed and factory-woven textiles reflects changing times, fashions and tastes. From eastern to southern Africa, the social and historical significance of these beautiful and diverse materials are also reflected in the identities of those who wear them.
This exhibition takes a fresh look at the history, manufacture and continuing social significance of these textiles – the designs of which depict the convergence of African tastes and patronage with strong historical and contemporary trading ties from across the globe. The cultural and social significance of these textiles have also influenced some of the region’s foremost contemporary artists and photographers – including Georgia Papageorge, Karel Nel, Peterson Kamwathi and Araminta de Clermont.
These textiles – including kanga from Kenya and Tanzania, capulana from Mozambique, and shweshwe from southern Africa – mirror changing times, fashions and tastes. They provide a detailed chronology of the social, political, religious, emotional and sexual concerns of the (mainly) women who wear them. Their patterns and inscriptions also vary according to the age of the wearer and the context in which the cloth is worn. This unspoken language may be used to suggest thoughts and feelings which cannot be spoken. They are worn in secular and sacred contexts and play a central role in all of the major rite-of-passage ceremonies in women’s and, in some cases, men’s lives.
The exhibition contributes to the small but steadily growing body of research into these relatively neglected African textile traditions.”
Photo: From the series ‘A New Beginning’
© Araminta de Clermont, Cape Town, South Africa, 2009–2010
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.)
Some more photos taken earlier this year in Dogon country, Mali, this time by Ilsemargret Luttmann. As we can see design innovation in indigo dyeing, embroidery, and weaving are very much a feature of contemporary dress.
All photos copyright Ilsemargret Luttmann. Please do not reproduce without permission.
The latest issue of African Arts magazine (Summer 2012, Volume 45, #2) includes as important article by Genevieve Hill-Thomas which explores the use of wild silk by the Marka people of Burkina Faso in the weaving of strip woven wrapper cloths known as faso dan fani. Although general texts on the arts of Burkina had noted that wild silk was woven in the region, this was not well known even to students of African textiles and has received far less attention than wild silk cloth production among the Yoruba and Hausa in Nigeria.
Large pods containing many cocoons are collected in the bush, or as they become increasingly scarce, purchased from as far away as Ghana. Supervised by a family matriarch the pods are boiled with wood ash and potash to separate the fibres. After drying they are carded and spun in preparation for weaving. Interestingly Hill-Thomas notes that today many weavers substitute kapok fibres from silk-cotton trees for the more expensive silk, and that often only knowledgeable consumers can tell the difference in the finished cloth.
The tuntun silk is used to weave warp stripes in otherwise cotton cloths called faso dan fani. Dyed either dark indigo, medium blue, or light brown, together with undyed white yarn, these four colours are combined in strips, making either shike, if cotton is used alone, or tuntun fani if silk stripes are included. After being sewn up to make 13-strip pagne of six-strip scarves, the cloths are overdyed with indigo. In the case of the tuntun this results in a finished cloth that is black, light blue, and greenish brown.
“While beliefs about tuntun fani’s magical qualities vary considerably, the textile has decidedly spiritual connotations. Weaving families – whether Muslim, Christian, or animist – hold that their work is sacred and the resulting cloth is blessed.”
All photos by Genevieve Hill-Thomas. Reproduced wiith permission.
The latest issue of Hali magazine (#171, Spring 2012 – available from www.hali.com ) has two worthwhile articles on aspects of African textiles.
This beautiful and rare cloth, formerly owned by the celebrated Parisian couturier Paul Poiret and recently acquired by the MFA Boston, is the subject of an interesting and thought provoking “Masterpiece” appraisal by dealer Andres Moraga. As he points out there is still considerable uncertainty in the identification of some of these more obscure styles of blue and white cloth, woven with often quite subtle variations over a wide area under the influence of the dispersal of Mande weavers of Malian origin over many centuries. This piece is tentatively attributed to Sierra Leone on the basis of comparison with two published cloths in the Lamb collection (Gilfoy 1987 numbers 8 & 12), but to my mind is far more likely to be from northwestern Ivory Coast along with the two related cloths in the Quai Branly. In fact I would suggest that the two cloths Gilfoy published are likely not to have been woven in Sierra Leone either (for what its worth my guess would be Mali and northwestern Ivory Coast respectively.) In any event two things are clear. Firstly this is a fine and rare cloth with an exceptional provenance that deserves the consideration it is given in the article. Secondly we can note how little is known about the cloths of this whole sub-region and how much further research is urgently required.
Ros Weaver’s article Saharan Chic is a well researched introduction to the plant fibre and leather mats of the Tuareg and Maures of the Sahara, illustrated with some superb examples in the collection of Rafaelle Carrieri of the Altai Gallery, Milan.
The large elaborately patterned cloths commissioned from master weavers by chiefs and wealthy “big men” of the Ewe in the Volta region of Ghana and Togo in the early decades of the C20th are some of the most admired and sought after of African textiles. There was far greater diversity of design and elaboration of technique among the weavers that made up what we now regard as the Ewe tradition than among the court-centred kente cloth weavers of their near neighbours, the Asante. In simple terms Ewe cloths were prestige display items worn at important events to demonstrate publicly the wealth and cultural sophistication of the wearer. Since elaboration of well woven figurative weft float motifs such as people, animals, swords etc was the primary factor in the increasing the cost of a cloth ( as they required more skill, time and costly materials to weave) in the majority of cases they provided the primary signifier of the owner’s wealth and the weaver’s skill. From time to time, however, we can encounter a cloth where a more subtle display of skill and connoisseurship is apparent . Such is the case with the cloth above, dating from circa 1920-40, (click the image for a much larger view) which, in my view at least, is a tour de force of weaving skill expressed through variation in colour and form rather than in complexity of motif.
The warp pattern (going vertically on the detail image above) remains the same throughout the cloth – blue predominates, broken up by clusters of narrow stripes in red, white, and yellow. Sparing use is made of weft stripes, in the section above, a pair of wider stripes in yellow thread. Three of the warp colours, red, white, and blue, along with another colour, green, are used widely in the weft patterning, while the forth warp colour, yellow, appears much less.
The detail above also introduces us to the main decorative technique explored to such effect on this cloth, a continual reconfiguration of width and colour and placement in the use of weft faced stripes. The weaver uses the basic pattern structure of many Ewe cloths, in which a composite pattern block is made up of two wide weft faced blocks that frame a warp faced section with a central motif. This composite pattern block is then aligned against warp faced areas on the two adjacent strips creating an alternation that structures the overall pattern layout of the cloth. Unusually the weaver also adds paired weft stripes (not weft-faced stripes) that break up many of the warp faced blocks, varying this in places by omitting them or using a different colour or technique.
Within this grid structure the weaver plays around with variations in the width of stripes and the placement of colours, restraining his palette to red, blue, white and green, with sporadic yellow. Variation is also achieved by plying two colours of thread together, in the section above blue with white, red with white and green with white.
If we focus on a a single strip this use of stripes emerges clearly – click the image to enlarge. Each of the nine composite pattern blocks differs from its neighbours. Reading from the left we have: 1 – a double stripe in red and white, single red, single white, plied red and white; 2 – two wide blocks composed of narrow red, white, blue , and plied red/white, framing a single wide plied red/white stripe; 3 – two wide blocks of varying width stripes adding green to the previous colours, with the same central stripe; 4 – as 3 but with central stripe omitted; 5 – returns to 3 with central stripe but slight variant in second block; 6 – block made up of ten evenly spaced narrow stripes separated by warp faced areas; 7 – the first three narrow stripes of the previous block are compressed together, a zigzag supplementary warp float motif (one of only two on the entire cloth) separates others; 8 – two blocks composed of varying stripe widths, no central stripe; 9 – as 8 but with red/white plied central stripe.
Finally, if we return to the full picture from the start of the post we see a distinct lower edge strip in which solid wide stripes, some framed by narrow white stripes, simplify the pattern block layout.
What interests me here, aside from the visual beauty of the result, is how a master weaver could set himself constraints in colour and pattern, using only part of the repertoire at his disposal, and using rhythms of repetition and variation, explore those possibilities to the full. Close attention to the cloth pays tribute to his skill and to the knowledgeable patronage of his customer.
To view this cloth and others in our recently updated gallery of Ewe textiles click here. Or of course you are welcome to come and see it at our shop.
Marché en A.O.F. signed J.B. Vettiner, 1931. [click all images to enlarge]. From Christie’s sale The Africanists, Amsterdam 1 July 1998. Oil on canvas, preparatory work for a mural painted in the pavilion of the city of Bordeaux at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in Paris.
Although this is in most respects a typical colonial genre scene of no outstanding merit, it is unusual because of the detail and accuracy with which the artist has depicted the textiles worn by the participants. Moreover the textiles shown are in several instances extremely rare styles not well represented even in French museum collections. I am intrigued to find these cloths shown in this context and can’t help wondering if they have survived in an obscure French collection, perhaps in Bordeaux, to this day. The scene was clearly not drawn from life – there is no suggestion in the limited biographical information available on the artist, Jean-Baptiste Vettiner (1871-1935), that he travelled in West Africa, and the cloths shown are far too elaborate and expensive to have been worn by porters in the market. Gathering cotton was a frequent theme of colonial imagery as the postcards dating to circa 1910-20 below show.
So what can be said about these cloths ? The image below numbers the main pieces.
1. Wool kaasa blanket from Mali, of the lanndaaka type, with the central motif of the mosque, lanndal, woven by a maabo weaver. Shown wrongly worn vertically as a kind of hooded burnous rather wrapped horizontally. The kaasa lanndaaka below is in the National Museum of Mali, Bamako – see Textiles du Mali, Bernhard Gardi, 2003.
2 and 4. Indigo dyed cotton cloths with white warp stripes at the selvedge of each strip and coloured supplementary weft float motifs are typical of the Bondoukou region on the northern part of the Ghana/ Côte D'Ivoire border, where they were woven by Dioula, and perhaps Abron or Koulango weavers. The cloth below is on our gallery.
3 and 6. These are really obscure types, related to weft faced cloths woven in West and north west parts of Côte D'Ivoire by weavers who may be Guro, Mande or Dioula, working in a number of as yet undocumented local traditions. The Musee Quai Branly in Paris has a superb collection of related pieces, although unfortunately largely without much useful collection data. Search for Côte D'Ivoire in their textiles collection database to see more. They have the piece below as Senufo but that is unlikely as the Senufo learned weaving from the Dioula in the early decades of the C20th.
5. Also from Côte D'Ivoire this cloth is an example of a slightly better known but still rare style that we believe to be the work of Guro or Mande weavers. The example below is on our gallery now.
7. One of the more unusual types of Malian blanket, the arkilla bammbu would have been used as a prestige display hanging for a Fulani wedding and is most unlikely to have been worn at all. The detail below is from a cloth in the National Museum of Mali, Bamako – see Textiles du Mali, Bernhard Gardi, 2003.
8. This cloth has embroidered rather than woven decoration, probably the work of a Hausa embroiderer in the north of Côte D'Ivoire. I know of only one related example of this style on a man’s wrap cloth (rather than robes and trousers). Now in the Karun Thakar collection (www.karuncollection.com) it was acquired in Accra and probably collected in northern Ghana.
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