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

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.

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.

New Article: “The Shape of Fashion–the Historic Silk Brocades (akotifahana) of Highland Madagascar” by Sarah Fee

The latest issue of African Arts magazine (Volume 46 Number 3 Autumn 2013) has an important article by Sarah Fee of the Royal Ontario Museum that explores in considerable detail the splendid brocaded silk cloths of the Merina in nineteenth century Madagascar that inspired the 1990s revival and the recent well publicised spider silk cloth travelling exhibit.

(Merina, late 19th century. Bombyx silk, natural and synthetic dyes, supplementary wefts; 231cm x 180cm. Royal Ontario Museum ROM2010.75.1)

Drawing on both her extensive field research and a deep knowledge of archival sources Fee is able to situate this tradition in the wider context of both regional textile history and changing Merina society at the onset of colonial intervention. She argues that brocaded silk cloths rather than being a royal tradition with symbolic imagery deeply imbedded in Merina culture were a “short-lived elite innovative dress fashion” with only indirect royal patronage and that motifs were decorative and at first subordinate to an interest in striping. External influences were a major factor and of these it was the wider Indian Ocean trade networks, and in particular the import of Omani textiles that were predominant.

(Cotton and silk striped mantle (arindrano) with brocaded borders, Merina, c.1882. Dresden Ethnographic Museum 19106)

(Merina, c. 1858-63, Borocera silk, natural dyes, metal beads, Royal ontario Museum, ROM 947.1.6)

The cloth above represents a rare type within an older tradition based on indigenous wild silk thread. Covered in tin or silver beads, these high value cloths called mandiavola were associated with maturity, authority, nobility, ancestors, and the creator spirit himself.

African Arts magazine is available here.

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.

Minimal #7: Yoruba women’s weave, trans-Saharan trade silk and wild silk.

More from an occasional series of posts that will highlight some rare West African textiles where the elaboration and complexity of design that usually typifies high status textiles is replaced by a more minimal aesthetic….

NW489 - Another extremely rare and early type of Yoruba women's weave cloth, dating from the late C19th or early C20th. One is shown in the classic book "Nigerian Weaving" (1980:200) by Venice Lamb and Judy Holmes and captioned "a very old pure silk Yoruba cloth." We have collected three others over the years, the last one about 5 years back. The warp is local beige and white wild silk sanyan, the weft white hand spun cotton, while the design alternates rows of openwork holes with threefold lines of supplementery weft float woven from thick loosely spun magenta silk from the trans Saharan trade. Formed of two panels of cloth joined at the centre and woven by a woman using an upright single heddle loom. Condition: loose fibres from the magenta silk have spread onto adjacent beige and white fibres in places, creating an appearance similar to slight colour bleeding, otherwise condition is excellent. Measurements: 78ins x 56, 200cm x 142.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

More details on our gallery here.

Minimal #6: Yoruba women’s weave wild silk wrapper cloth.

More from an occasional series of posts that will highlight some rare West African textiles where the elaboration and complexity of design that usually typifies high status textiles is replaced by a more minimal aesthetic….

NW469 - Very rare early C20th cloth woven from local beige wild silk "sanyan" with stripes of creamy white hand spun cotton. Bands of openwork woven holes decorate the lower edge of the cloth. Sanyan cloths woven by women are far scarcer than strip woven sanyan. Formed of two panels of cloth joined at the centre and woven by a woman using an upright single heddle loom. This beautiful cloth has a soft feel, a few minor marks and worn spots but overall is in good condition. Measurements: 77ins x 59ins, 195cm x 149 cm.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

More details on our gallery here.

Silk in the Sahel: Tuntun and Marka Faso Dan Fani in Northwestern Burkina Faso

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.

Some early Yoruba aso oke strips

Yoruba aso oke strips, circa 1900. Indigo dyed hand spun cotton with magenta silk from the trans-Saharan caravans……

Some more vintage Asante silk kente

Today we have updated the selection of vintage Asante silk kente cloths on our website. Details of descriptions, sizes and prices on our gallery here or visit us in London…..

Spider Silk Textile from Madagascar

Now on display at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, is a unique and remarkable Malagasy cloth woven from the silk of the golden orb spider. The project, organized by Simon Peers, the British art historian behind a long running project to sustain and rediscover the finest traditions of Malagasy silk weaving, took years of experimentation and, apparently, the output of over a million spiders. Details here

New acquisitions - part two "liar's cloth"

K201: Rare Asante silk man's kente cloth for ceremonial wear, circa 1920-30s, in the pattern known as "liar's cloth" or in Twi "nkontompo n'tama." As with all Asante kente the cloth is named after the background design. On a "liar's cloth" three narrow warp stripes run along one selvedge of each cloth strip and at regular intervals, cross the strip as a weft, before continuing along the strip as warp stripes at the other edge. The technique used to create this effect is unique to Asante weaving and to day known only to a few master weavers. It involves keeping each of the three small groups of warp threads used to create the three alternating stripes at a different length and tension to the main body of the warp using a set of small wax ball weights which are hooked onto the threads and hang below the warp as it is woven. These allow the weaver to manipulate them independently as he completes the strip. "Liar's cloth" is rare and among the most sought after of Asante textiles, and this fine albeit rather worn, silk example has a good variety of neatly woven supplementary weft motifs. To view this and other vintage Asante kente cloths in our inventory click here