New book: African Textiles Today by Chris Spring

African Textiles Today by Chris Spring (British Museum Press), shifts the focus away from the woven textile traditions of West And Central Africa that dominated the museum’s classic but now over two decades old, African Textiles by John Picton and John Mack. Instead Spring devotes the largest part of the book’s colourful selection of images and comparatively brief and accessible texts to printed textiles, notably to the so-called “wax” and “fancy print” styles of West and Central Africa and especially to the “kangas” and related cloths made for the Eastern and Southern African markets. This shift mirrors a broadening in the British Museum’s acquisition and displays over recent years to encompass these previously neglected areas.

Kanga, Tanzania, 1960s. Af2003,21.1 : “The inscription, in Kiswahili written in Arabic script, reads: You left the door open, so the cat ate the doughnut; what are you going to do about it, tenant ?” page 190.

Rather than attempting an encyclopaedic survey of the myriad of textiles produced in Africa over recent decades, the book sets out a number of themes, including trade, status, communication, and systems of belief, illustrating them with brief “stories” based on individual textiles and drawn widely from across the continent. Other chapters look at the currently fashionable engagement between textiles and a number of contemporary African artists (a topic that provides the front cover image of an El Anatsui sculpture) and at textiles in photography (the back cover image of Samuel Fosso as a parody Congo chief.) Drawing on his research and publications on topics including kangas, contemporary African art, and the textile traditions of North Africa, Chris Spring is able to highlight interesting and often unexpected parallels between diverse artefacts and traditions.

A New Beginning by Araminta de Clermont, Cape Town, South Africa, 2009-10. South Sotho men – “These three young men wear another kind of blanket known as lekhokolo, which shows that they have completed the initiation ceremony and reached manhood. Designs such as the maize cob or Poone, seen here on their Seana Marena label blankets, are very popular for lekhokolo, as they signify virility and fertility.” page 228.

Although some fine and historically significant objects from the British Museum’s collection of West African textiles are illustrated and discussed, I would have liked to see a book with this title pay more attention to developments today in the still vibrant historical textile traditions of West Africa, where significant innovation is apparent in both weaving and dyeing of cloth in many areas. Nevertheless it is African printed textiles that have in recent years been at the heart of a growing appreciation of African fashion and of a growing recognition of the work of African fashion designers. In exploring the British Museum’s expanded collection activities in this field, and in concluding with the work of Duro Olowu, a leading Nigerian born fashion designer, Spring’s lively book looks ahead to new directions in this fascinating and still under- researched field.

 

An exceptional Dogon uldebe blanket

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.)

A glimpse of Dogon textiles today.

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.

“Dames de Couleurs / Colourful Ladies”–new DVD on women dyers in Mali

“Sanata and Dicko are dyers  in Mali. Sanata produces coloured bazin fabrics with her co-wives in Bamako.
Dicko lives in the bush in Dogon country and dyes loincloths using indigo.
They have amazing skills, and yet both constantly face the same challenge : ensuring a decent life for their children.”

“Dames de Couleurs” is a new Dvd exploring the continued vitality of dyeing traditions in Mali today, moving from urban Bamako to a village in Dogon country. Produced by Patricia Gerimont and Jean-Claude Taburlaux it will be available in September from http://www.cvb-videp.be/ – hopefully with an English subtitle version. Patricia Gerimont is the author of Teinturieres a Bamako: Quand la couleur sort de sa reserve (Ibis, 2008) which is one of the best recent books on an African textile traditions, available from French Africanist bookseller Soumbala.

Below are a few more of Patricia’s photographs – click on images to enlarge. All photographs in this post are copyright Patricia Gerimont. Please do not reproduce without permission.

Bamako

Dogon country

Gilbert “Bobbo” Ahiagble, Master Weaver

Gilbert “Bobbo” Ahiagble, Ewe Master Weaver. Photo by Lisa Aronson

To mark the recent passing of Bobbo Ahiagble, who was undoubtedly the best known and most successful Ewe master weaver and kente entrepreneur we reproduce below a brief biography written a few years back for the site africancrafts.com. 

“Gilbert "Bobbo" Ahiagble, of the Ewe ethnic group is a Master Kente Cloth Weaver from the Volta Region of Ghana.

He began assisting his father by winding bobbins at the age of three and moved onto the West African loom as soon as his legs could reach the treadles, at around the age of nine. He obtained a solid formal education also and his academic abilities opened doors for him and he soon received a diploma as a secondary school teacher, which obliged him to make a choice at the age of 21, to become a teacher or to remain a weaver. Influenced by words he heard from his Peace Corps math teacher, he combined the two and became a teacher of Kente cloth weaving.

Bobbo was first invited to the USA in 1975 as an Artist-In-Residence at the Museum of African Art, then a small, private museum which became part of the Smithsonian Institution several years later. His skills as a communicator soon gave him the title of "Cultural Ambassador of Kente Cloth" and continuous invitations to work abroad came from Switzerland, Canada and the USA. Most recently he taught American fiber artists the fine art of Kente weaving in a workshop held in Atlanta at the prestigeous conference of the Handweavers Guild of America, "Convergence".

Bobbo has had a major influence on traditional West African strip cloth weavers beyond the borders of Ghana. He serves as a spokesperson for the power in the language of Kente cloth, filled with symbolic proverbs present to enrich the lives of everyone ready to listen and learn.

Just recently he has co-authored a children's book, titled Master Weaver from Ghana, with Louise S. Meyer, with outstanding photographs of his home town taken by Nestor Hernandez, a Washington, DC based documentary photographer. And he has built a school and dormitory in Denu, called the Craft Institute of Kente Weaving, where student groups can stay and learn traditional Kente cloth weaving.”

text copyright Africancrafts.com. Reproduced with permission.

I only met Bobbo on one occasion in 2008 at his base in Denu, but was pleased to collect several of his cloths, one of which (shown below) is now in the collection of the British Museum.

Virtually every expat who spent time in Accra over the past three decades knew Bobbo and he will be fondly remembered worldwide. Louise Meyer has organised an event to celebrate and remember him in Washington on August 4th. Details below:

Ghana Boy meets Al-Buraq

In the 1960s and 70s many young Dogon and Bamana  men from Mali migrated to the relatively cosmopolitan cities of Accra and Kumase in Ghana in search of work. Back home to show of their new found sophistication these youths became known as the “Ghana Boys.”  Alongside imported clothing,  some wore a new and distinctive style of embroidered sleeveless tunic  decorated with colourful and often figurative designs.

This example, which was collected recently in Jenne, has a particularly fine depiction of Al-Buraq, the winged horse that carried the Prophet on his night journey to Jerusalem.

For more on “Ghana Boy” tunics see Victoria L. Rovine: Continuity, Innovation, Fashion – Three Genres of Malian Embroidery in African Arts 44(3) Autumn 2011

A Weft Faced Ewe Kente

Continuing our exploration of some recent additions to our Ewe Kente gallery today’s post looks at a dramatic style of weft faced Ewe cloth in which solid blocks of colour are arranged in patterns across the fabric.

Ewe649 - Fine Ewe chief's cotton cloth in the weft faced, so-called "checkerboard" style, with subtle variation in the shades of green and pale greenish brown used with the bolder red, blue, and yellow blocks. It is rare to find cloths of this style that are, as this one is, complete and intact with no patches or repairs. Condition is excellent, age circa 1910-30s. Measurements: 130ins x 70, 330cm x 178.

Click on photos to enlarge…

The Ewe name for these heavyweight weft faced cloths is titriku which just means “thick cloth.” It is possible that they are primarily the work of weavers in the more northerly and easterly, and perhaps peripheral regions of what is now regarded as the Ewe regions of Ghana and Togo, although much further research is needed. The late C19th Basel Mission photograph below (reproduced in Lamb West African Weaving 1975), which shows the man at the left wearing a similar cloth, is one of several that confirm that this style was produced in area in the nineteenth century at least, if not earlier. The chief at the centre may be seen, wearing what appears to be the same cloth, in another image on our website here.

In photographs they can sometimes be confused with superficially similar block patterned cloths called tapi woven in Mali, a much more recent tradition that Bernhard Gardi sees as dating only from the 1950s. However the latter have different layouts, different colour combinations, and a different weight and texture.

For this and other fine Ewe cloths please visit our Gallery here.