Mangbetu hairstyle, Congo, 1958

Vintage postcard. Just a beautiful photo, posted for no particular reason…..

An exceptional silk Asante kente cloth

 

Superb and very rare museum quality Asante silk kente, early C20th, in the "mmeeda" pattern. Very finely woven supplementary weft float motifs in soft subtle colours on a muted green ground. Collected in the 1970s and in an English private collection since. Ross 1998:115 notes mmeeda means "something extraordinary" and cites Rattray (1927:241) "Asonawo mmada" - "the father of King Bonsu Panyin was Owusu Ansa, who belonged to the Asona clan, the first of that clan ever to be father of an Asante king." Details on our website here.

Some Asante kente cloths are woven from cotton, a very few highly prized heirloom pieces are silk, but the vast majority are woven from rayon, which was adopted by Asante weavers as a substitute for more expensive silk soon after it became commercially available, at least by the 1930s/40s. We focus as far as possible on  rare silk pieces rather than the more readily available rayon ones (which can be picked up  on Ebay for a few $100.)  Careful attention and a trained eye attuned to the nuances of Asante textile design will be rewarded by a greater appreciation of the skill shown by those weavers working for Asante kings and chiefs.  I assess the quality of Asante kente primarily on the scale and variety in the weft faced patterns - an exceptional example should have a wide range of motifs built up of very well executed small scale shapes rather than larger blocks of colour. Pieces of this quality are extremely hard to find and are poorly represented in museum collections, with the exception of those collected during the early 1970s by Venice Lamb (cloths now at the Smithsonian)  and Brigitte Menzel (cloths now in Leiden, Berlin and Krefeld). Their relative scarcity can be attributed to the fact that top pieces were woven in very small numbers for royal use and were property of the stool rather than the individual ruler. To view our current stock click here.

West African Textiles from the Karun Thakar Collection now online…

Men’s wrapper cloth, Abron or Koulango peoples, Bondoukou region, Ivory Coast, circa 1900 (Photo from www.karuncollection.com)

The Summer 2011 issue of Hali magazine (www.hali.com) features the textile collection of the British collector and dealer Karun Thakar, who was for a number of years an active presence in Portobello Road. African textiles are only a small part of a vast collection of cloths and artefacts, many of museum quality and international significance, from many regions of the world. Karun was an enthusiastic (and still sadly missed) buyer in the textile market of Accra for a number of years, and together with his purchases in Portobello Road and other places, this enabled him to assemble a remarkable African collection including numerous early pieces.

Over the last few months Karun has been posting a selection of pieces from each area of his collection on line at a new website www.karuncollection.com . Navigation on the site is slightly eccentric but a drop down menu at the upper right gives us an option to click on West African Textiles, bringing up four pages of thumbnail images. Some of these lead to single items, others to groups of cloths (click on the “read more” tag not the enlarge button.) Among them are several notable Nigerian cloths, an exceptional group of early Ewe and Asante cloths, and some fine early painted Islamic wrappers.

Woman’s wrapper with supplementary warp float designs, central Nigeria, possibly Jukun, C19th or early C20th. An extremely rare piece is an as yet unidentified style. (Photo from www.karuncollection.com)

Men’s wrapper, silk and cotton, Asante, Ghana, C19th. (Photo from www.karuncollection.com)

Men’s wrapper, cotton, Ewe, Ghana, early C20th. (Photo from www.karuncollection.com)

Men’s wrapper, cotton, painted design of Islamic amulets, made in Ghana by Hausa Koranic scholar, probably for a Fante chief, early C20th. See Hali #168 for another exceptional cloth of this type. (Photo from www.karuncollection.com)

Cloth in unidentified style, C19th. Catalogued as Mali, but I would suggest an example of Malian influence on the periphery of Ghanaian weaving, either in Togo or perhaps in Ivory Coast. (Photo from www.karuncollection.com)

An exceptional C19th Yoruba aso oke cloth

This classic style of nineteenth century Yoruba aso oke cloth involved the alternation of a simple warp striped strip with a second design in which supplementary weft float motifs are laid out on a fine blue and white checked background. In an early example such as this the magenta silk thread alaari from the trans-Saharan caravan trade is combined with local hand spun indigo dyed cotton. In some cases, as here, there is one different warp striped design to add variety. Although the supplementary weft float motifs are largely based on the Koranic board shape (a wooden rectangle with an arrow head at the top, used by boys at Islamic schools as a writing board) in early examples as here the weaver plays around with variations on the shape. On C20th examples the design format becomes more rigid. This cloth can be dated by comparison with examples in the British Museum accessioned in 1900. It has a very slight pink tinge from a recent washing but otherwise is in very good condition for a piece of this age. More details here.

This is one of a group of rare Nigerian textiles we have recently added to our website. Click here and visit the Nigerian gallery pages for more.

Drummers, poets, and master weavers: rhythm and structure in the design of Ewe “kente” cloths.

Some African textile scholars have remarked on what they perceive to be affinities between aspects of African textile design and the use of “off beat” rhythm in African musical traditions, for example in designating certain types of Malian blanket as “jazz cloths.” While these analogies are suggestive and thought provoking, and do seem to me to point in some degree towards important aspects of textile design in the region, as yet there has been very little attention paid to discussing these issues with either makers or consumers of particular African textile traditions. In this note I want to quote at some length from a recent article by the Ghanaian professor of literature Dr Kofi Anyidoho (“Ghanaian Kente: Cloth and Song” in The Poetics of Cloth: African Textiles/ Recent Art edited by Lynn Gumpert, GreyArt Gallery, New York, 2008) , that mentions neither “off beat” rhythm nor “improvisation,” but nevertheless appears to me to be an important contribution to this discussion by someone who is both an Ewe and a trained weaver.

“The first expert on kete weaving I interviewed was my uncle Dumega Kwadzovi Anyidoho, the man who brought me up and under whose tutelage I learned to weave. Now in his eighties, he is acknowledged as one of the most experienced master weavers in Wheta, with more than sixty-five years of experience. He is also a master drummer and heno (poet-cantor.) Halfway through our conversation I asked him to name other great master weavers he could recall. To my surprise, almost everyone he remembered was also a heno and/or a master drummer….

My uncle pointed out that this was more than a coincidence and offered two possible explanations for this apparent connection between the art of the master weaver and that of the master drummer and the poet-cantor. First, he explained that the weavers, whether alone or in groups, often sang to ease the tedium of long hours at the loom. Of greater significance however, is the fact that weaving, like drumming and singing, is a rhythm-based aesthetic performance. From the habit of singing songs composed by others, the musically and poetically gifted among the weavers would begin to try out their own voices and, over time, developed into composers of note. The rhythm maintained by the regular alternation of the heddles (eno) and the treadles (aforke), reinforced by the throwing and catching of the shuttle (evu), as well as the constant rhythm of the beater (exa), all provide a natural drive for the flow of song….

Beyond the aesthetic competence entailed in the application of the rhythm of weaving to the composition and performance of song, there is the more complicated factor of technical competence. Weaving is more than the application of a sense of rhythm. It requires considerable technical skills in design, possible only through a careful application of mathematical calculations combined with the architectural ability to construct organic shapes and forms from individual threads as building blocks. This process is not unlike that involved in the architectural design of the well-made song or poem.”

Click on any of the images above for a larger view.

To conclude, follow the links by clicking on any of the Ewe cloths below to view a selection of top pieces from our gallery. Looking at and thinking about the design of these cloths in terms of rhythm and structure does appear to enhance perception of the designs….

An exceptional early C20th Ewe “kente” cloth

Although rather worn and missing a couple of strips this superb Ewe man’s cloth is exceptionally elaborate and finely woven and still looks beautiful even in its present condition. Virtually every available space on the blue background is covered by either weft faced bands or very varied supplementary weft float designs. This cloth would have been the masterpiece of a very experienced master weaver working for a wealthy and knowledgeable patron. Dates from circa 1900-20. Click the image to go to our website for a larger photograph and more details.

The 1/4 million euro weaver’s pulley….

A Baule (Ivory Coast) weaver’s heddle pulley, collected in 1927, sold yesterday at Sotheby’s Paris for Euro 240,750.. more info and auctioneer’s description here