West African Prestige Robes from the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris.

Below are a selection of unusual and early robes from the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris.  Their entire collection may be viewed online here.

Boubou tilbi, Musee du Quai Branly, Paris #73.1963.0.951. Jenne or Timbuctou, Mali, early C20th.

Boubou lomasa, Soninke peoples, Segou region, Mali, early C20th. Musee du Quai Branly, Paris#71.1934.0.34

Rare style of robe from the Bamana people, Segou region, Mali, before 1878. Musee du Quai Branly, Paris 71.1880.69.8

Nupe or Hausa robe from Nigeria collected in the Sahara region of Tamanrasset, Algeria., Nineteenth century. Musee du Quai Branly, Paris # 71.1938.5.1

Talismanic robe, Guinea, collected from Chief Kimné Condetto in 1889. Musee du Quai Branly, Paris#71.1905.44.1

Manding chief's robe, Liberia, C19th or early C20th. Musee du Quai Branly, Paris #70.2007.21.1

 

An early Cameroun chief’s robe.

Chief’s prestige robe, Grassfields region, Cameroun, early C20th. Private collection, London. Front view.

This exceptional robe is tailored from hand woven hand spun indigo dyed cotton cloth that was woven in quite wide panels. The most probable source for this cloth would be the upright single heddle looms used by women weavers in many parts of Nigeria and the western part of Cameroun, although the cloth is of a looser weave and lighter weight than  is typical of Nigerian textiles of this type. The neck area is lined with a thin check patterned linen fabric that looks to be of French origin, while the hem and sleeve areas are dyed with a type of Central European patterned indigo cotton fabric called blaudrucke  - shown below.

Both the front and the back are decorated with hand embroidered designs in white, red, and yellow cotton. The large lozenge shape that encompasses the neck may perhaps be regarded as representing a necklace from which a giant bead or pendant is suspended. Small “double gong” motifs hanging from the “belt” area  are an early representation of what would become the dominant decorative motif on later Cameroun robes,  while the small lizards and other animals are quite a distinctive and unusual feature not typically found on robes even though they are part of the design repertoire of prestige sculptures and other royal artefacts.

Chief’s prestige robe, Grassfields region, Cameroun, early C20th. Private collection, London. Front view, detail.

Chief’s prestige robe, Grassfields region, Cameroun, early C20th. Private collection, London. Back view, detail.

Chief’s prestige robe, Grassfields region, Cameroun, early C20th. Private collection, London. Back view.

The construction of this robe from broad panels of hand woven indigo dyed cloth of uncertain origin compares closely to the robe shown below, which was collected before 1908 and is in the collection of the Museum der Kulturen, Basel.

“Cameroun: boubou bali, 198 x 130 cm. Collection du missionnaire G. Spellenberg (?), datent sans doute d’avant 1908. Collection de la Mission de Bale, Museum der Kulturen, Basel.” Scanned from Bernhard Gardi ed. Le Boubou –c’est chic (Editions Christoph Merian, 2000).

Click on the photos to enlarge.

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.

African Textiles in Close-up: two robes in the British Museum

At the end of last month I had the opportunity to spend a morning at the new textile store for the British Museum in Blyth House, West London. With the patient assistance of curator Julie Hudson and Textile Centre manager Helen Wolfe I was able to look closely at a number of robes and cloths from the British Museum’s vast collection that had attracted my attention either in publications or via their online database. (The entire collection is now online here and provides a hugely important resource for those interested in studying African textiles.)

Although I am lucky enough to spend most of my days surrounded by stacks of old African cloths there is in my view always more to be learned and more details to be grasped by paying close attention to threads, weaves, patterns, constructions, layouts, textures, etcetera. Some of these can be learned from photographs but actually seeing and handling cloths reveals more again. [Any of the cloths, or indeed other items, in the collection of the British Museum can be viewed by appointment and curators are generally happy to help.]

Over the next few weeks I will be writing a short series of posts based on this visit, beginning today with a look at two  robes from Sierra Leone or, more probably, Liberia. One of these has been frequently published and the other is very obscure.

My attention was drawn to this simple and rather stained looking robe (British Museum number AF,WA.10) by the early accession number and the brief description on the image page “Embroidered garment made of cloth (grass).” In old descriptions and travellers accounts of West African textiles cloths described as woven of “grass” are generally actually woven from raffia (the dried inner leaves of a type of palm tree. While cloths woven from raffia on the upright single heddle loom in West Africa are reasonably widespread, strip woven raffia cloths are extremely rare (primarily, I think, because raffia thread could only provide short lengths that had to be tied together.)

There is no detailed record surviving of the origin or accession date of the robe but it appears to be part of the collection left to the museum by Henry Christy (1810-1865.) Disappointingly the first thing that became apparent when we handled and examined this robe was that despite the rather harsh scratchy texture, it was in fact woven from hand spun cotton not raffia. Raffia is not spun so on close examination the fibres are flat rather than round as here. [The main description on the BM page has now been corrected following our examination.]

So what accounts for the pale beige colour and harsh texture ? The robe appears to have been soaked in some kind of plant based dye (most probably after robe was tailored but before it was embroidered.)  Although I am not aware of any documentation of this practice in the southern part of Sierra Leone or Liberia, it is still in use in the making of “war shirts” called hu ronko among the Limba people in the north of the country and in neighbouring Guinea. In their book Blues et ocres de Guinée Anne-Chantal Gravellini and Annie Ringuedé describe the use of the bark of the tree terminalia ivorensis along with the kola nut Cola nitida to dye cloths and tunics a variety of ochre shades.

Also notable was the regular placement of thicker wefts at intervals along each strip of cloth. The embroidery, although limited in area and elaboration, is quite complex in design. Below is a detail from the back. Imported wool, cotton and silk is used.

The pocket has the folded over corner and oblique placing that were found on many robes from the Guinea Coast region and help to distinguish them from the better known robes of Mali and Nigeria.

The sides of the robe are completely open but it can be seen that they were once sewn up at the lower part. This sleeveless structure would put this robe within the group that the Lambs (Sierra Leone Weaving by Venice and Alastair Lamb)  report are called kusaibi, while the second robe that we looked at, with a more complex tailored design is called in Manding duriki ba.

Below we show front and back views from the BM site (BM accession number Af1934,0307.218). This robe was part of the Beving collection accessioned in 1934 but can be assumed to be from the nineteenth century.

Published by the Lambs with photographs that make it look very yellow this remarkable robe is in fact a very similar pale ochre colour to the first one we looked at, although it is softer to handle.

In this robe also there is a decorative effect in the cloth used achieved by adding thicker threads in the weft, albeit here in blocks rather than the single threads used in Af.WA.10. This is a quite unusual technique in West African strip weaving and may in itself point towards an origin in the same region. In his book Le Boubou –c’est chic (Basel, 2000), Bernhard Gardi attributes the very small number of robes of this type to Liberia. A blue ground robe with rather similar embroidery to this was collected in 1932 from a Mano chief in a village called Blaui in northern Liberia.

Click on the photos to enlarge. In the post above all detail photos are by Duncan Clarke and the full views are from the linked pages on the British Museum site.

Cloth of the month: Two Kanuri women’s robes.

The far north eastern corner of Nigeria and adjacent areas of Cameroun and Chad are today best known for Islamist insurgency but were once the centre of a powerful kingdom known to historians as Kanem-Bornu that grew rich through controlling the southern end of one of the most important trans-Saharan trade routes.  The Kanuri rulers maintained close links with both other trade centres in the Sahel such as Kano and Timbuktu and with north African trading centres and as a result developed a distinctive material culture  that today is little known. Among the most spectacular features were these embroidered tunic that formed a key part of ceremonial attire for high status Kanuri women. 

Made from imported trade cloth hand embroidered with brightly coloured silks these duriya tunics seem to have been quite varied in style during the nineteenth century, as indicated by examples in museum collections in Berlin and Paris, but to have become more standardised during the first half of the C20th. Our example, shown above, which was collected during the 1950s, is very similar to the single tunic in the British Museum that David Heathcote obtained in the early 1970s (British Museum #Af2008,2025.22) Tunics with embroidered decoration all over were known as sharwan kura (Lyndersay, Nigerian Dress, 2011), while those with more restricted decoration as below were   called kura.

As the sketch below indicates in use they formed part of an elaborate outfit combined with a headcloth, waist wrapper and a large wrapper called a leppaye that could be either locally woven or imported cloth.

From: Dani Lydersay, Nigerian Dress, the Body Honoured (2011, CBAAC, Lagos.)

This photo from the Bella Naija website shows a modern version at an elite Kanuri wedding.

To visit our gallery of West African robes clock here.

Exploring the West African textile collections of the Musee du Quai Branly: Part Four–Two Fon Royal Tunics.

“Gbecon-Huegbo workshop and Yemadje family: Ceremonial tunic (?), Fon style -  late 19th Century. Cotton 87.5 cm x 143. #71.1936.21.103 Musee du Quai Branly. Donated by Bernard Maupoil.”

“The kansawu is a “predator” tunic, designed to give freedom of movement to the arms and hands. However the presence of pockets means this is an item of clothing of the court, even a royal item. The quality and the extent of the embroidery, undoubtedly inspired by workshops in the Yoruba and Hausa territory, indicate its value and the rank of its wearer. This item of clothing was a joint work between the weavers of Gbekon Huegbo and Hounli, the cutting workshop and the Yemadje embroiderers of the Hountondji district.” [Abomey, Benin Republic.]

text by Joseph Adandé (Source:  Gaëlle Beaujean-Baltzer ed. Artistes D’Abomey – Fondation Zinsou, 2009).

“Gnimavo family  and Yemadje family: Prime Minister’s robe, Fon style -  between 1818 and 1858. Cotton and bone. 103.5 cm x 103.5cm x 10cm. #71.1936.21.66. Musee du Quai Branly. Donated by Bernard Maupoil.”

“Robe of Xagla, the migan of Guez0 (1818-1858). On the front a goats’ skull, from which the migan drank alcohol in private, before the sacrifices. Inside, a human jawbone, on which was eaten the powder of strength. the goats’ head has been daubed with human blood. (…) Robe worn when an enemy king or a particularly redoubtable individual was about to be exexcuted.” (Inv. Musee de l’Homme by B. Maupoil, 1936.) “

(Source:  Gaëlle Beaujean-Baltzer ed. Artistes D’Abomey – Fondation Zinsou, 2009). I would urge anyone to track down this remarkable and beautifully designed catalogue/book.

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.

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.