Exploring form and colour – An Ewe textile masterpiece

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.

COTTON: Global Threads arrive at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester

“Exhibition: COTTON: Global Threads, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until May 13 2012
Four years ago, curator Jennifer Harris and her team at the Whitworth were mooting ideas for a new exhibition that would feature as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad’s Stories of the World programme.
Cotton: Global Threads, which offers a social rather than historical account of the cotton industry and looks to place the textile in its social context, is the product of that first meeting four years ago.
Why cotton? Harris explains that when looking for a global story she also wanted something that had relevance to the region. As Lancashire was a major producer of cotton for the worldwide market during the 18th and 19th centuries, it seemed the perfect choice.
A major part of the display is the culmination of a three-year collaboration between the gallery and local students intended aimed at engaging them in textile work.
Visitors are encouraged to make use of a dressing room to try on the clothes created by the students, who “upcycled” charity shop finds by adding material they designed and printed.
The project also resulted in the students winning a grant to be sent to Ahmedabad, in India, to see cotton production first-hand.
Photographs of prints and landscapes from their trip have been lasered onto building blocks to create ‘Cottonopolis’ city, a sculpture also featured.
Other artists on display at Cotton: Global Threads include Yinka Shonibare and Lubaina Himid, who created pieces specially commissioned for the exhibition.
Himid’s kangas – pieces of printed cotton fabric featuring images and slogans, worn in West Africa, were based on designs she found in the Whitworth’s textile collection as well as through her own research and imagination.
Each kanga is presented with a photo collage made by the artist – her vision of the intended wearer of her design.
Presented in varying sized pieces to look as though they have been “discovered”, walking through Himid’s display is like rifling through the “lost scrapbook” she hoped to create.
Himid is a natural fit for the exhibition. Hailing from Zanzibar, she understands and encapsulates its theme perfectly, exploring the connection between people and their owned objects.
Harris says artists were given the freedom to engage with the theme as they saw fit. She did not seek out textile artists who simply used cotton, but people who had something to say about it.
One such example is Grace Ndiritu’s Still Life. Rather than setting out to make a film about textile, Ndiritu actually conceived Still Life while travelling through Mali with members of a nomadic tribe to make a film about responsible tourism.
Seeing how material was something that the tribe “live and breathe”, textile became a part of her “video paintings”, acting as a sister set to the original.
West African cotton is used in a physical performance by the artist to camera as Ndiritu wraps, conceals and reveals her body as she aims to provoke a differing set of responses from the viewer.
Shown in a completely dark room offset from the main gallery, the result is truly captivating.
Aboubakar Fofana, who was born in the region and is passionate about maintaining its cultural heritage, also seeks out Mali’s remaining textile masters to learn ancient African weaving and dyeing techniques.
He innovates these traditions by producing an installation piece, Les Arbres à Bleus – a forest of cotton trees made from organic fibres coloured using the nearly-lost Malian tradition of natural indigo and vegetable dyeing.
His choice to place trees at the subject of the piece reflects their central importance to his native Bambara ethnicity.
Considered as a symbol of life, Fofana says he also personally engages with the way that trees, like human beings, are all unique.
“They have their own DNA” he explains. Each sculpture in his forest is completely different and stands alone as distinct.
While the gallery blinds usually remain drawn to protect the work on display, Fofana has opted to leave them open, allowing the natural light to showcase his piece.
It also allows a view outside to the park surrounding the gallery, uniting the trees of Mali with Manchester ones.
Liz Rideal also uses the outside world, with her film, Drop Sari, projected on to the exterior of the building each night.
The piece, which can also be viewed inside the exhibition, is a series of shots of sari textile taken while in India.
With each rapid flash of sari a new set of colours emerge and, in response, LEDs illuminate the building in matching colour, heightening its effect.
Lying on the busiest bus route in Europe, the gallery hopes this spectacle will add a performative element that can be enjoyed by the passing city.
Even though the entire ground floor of the gallery has been given over to the exhibition, Harris expresses frustration at still not being able to fully cover the wide-ranging issues the production and consumption of cotton raises.
She calls it a “microcosm of the globalising world” which “stands for modernisation”.
With this is in mind, the ethical sins of the industry come in a display of high street pieces emblazoned with messages about issues such as child labour and pesticide usage in crop production.
Using a wide range of artistic practice, drawing on cultures from across the world and delving into different historical time periods, Cotton: Global Threads encompasses the many different facets of cotton as a personal, as well as economic, commodity.
Every piece in the exhibition has clearly been carefully considered, not just for its aesthetic value but for what it can add to the surrounding debate.
“These are big issues which are hard to tackle in an art gallery,” reflects Harris. “But I think with we have succeeded with Global Threads”.”

By Ruth Hazard | 14 February 2012 http://www.culture24.org.uk

• Open 10am-5pm (12pm-4pm Sunday). Admission free.

Above: Aboubakar Fofana, Les Arbres à Bleu

At top: Yinka Shonibare, Boy on Globe (2011)© Yinka Shonibare

“The Fashionable Hair”– Africa’s coastal style in the 1900s

These images are from two series of postcards produced between 1900 and 1910 by the photographer F.W.H Arkhurst in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast. Arkhurst, a member of the Nzima ethnic group born in the Gold Coast , was a timber exporter who lived in Assinie and later in Grand Bassam. His studio photographs capture perfectly the then fashionable style of  women’s dress along the African coast from the Niger Delta to the Ivory Coast as families grew prosperous from trading opportunities in the expanding colonial economies. Hair was swept high and adorned with gold jewellery or wrapped in cloth, tailored dress was of imported cotton prints, often with a shawl or wrap of locally woven fabrics.

Six Yards Guaranteed Dutch Design–Vlisco exhibition at Museum voor moderne kunst, Arnhem

from 29.01 till 06.05

“As early as 1846, the Vlisco company, based in Helmond, served the West African market with Dutch Wax textiles. From 29 January through 6 May, 2012, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem will present Six Yards Guaranteed Dutch Design, an exhibition about how Vlisco’s Dutch textiles became a part of various West African cultures and found their way into international fashion, the visual arts, and photography. The exhibition Six Yards is a tribute to Vlisco textiles: over a hundred years old, born in Indonesia, designed in the Netherlands, loved in Africa, and desired in the West. These colourful fabrics make their way to fashion shows in Paris, the markets in Ghana, and galleries in London and New York. The exhibition Six Yards focuses on all the relevant angles, from their presence and meaning in the work of artist Yinka Shonibare, to the stories in the oral tradition that have come from the fabrics.

Art, design, and fashion

The exhibition has been put together by the Suze May Sho artists’ collective, whose work focuses on the areas where art, design, and fashion meet. Through these disciplines, the collective makes a voyage of discovery through the world of Vlisco fabrics, the designs, and their often surprising significance. The exhibition explores the history of the textiles and their stories, touches on Dutch (post-)colonial history, takes a look at the differences and similarities between Western and non-Western cultures, and sheds light on how visual artists, like Viviane Sassen and Yinka Shonibare, as well as top designers around the world have been inspired by Vlisco’s textiles — right up to the Spring/Summer 2012 collection.

Artists, photographers, and fashion designers with work in the exhibition:

Yinka Shonibare, Kara Walker, Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, Fatimah Tuggar, Viviane Sassen, Lucy Orta, Hans Eijkelboom, Seydou Keïta, Andrea Spotorno, Meschac Gaba, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Collectie Arnhem, Harvey Bouterse, Acne, Marga Weimans, Dries van Noten, PetrouMan, Querijn Maurits Ver Huell en Vlisco designers.

Publication

A substantial exhibition journal will accompany the show, in addition to the richly illustrated book Vlisco Fabrics (in English), with text by Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, published by ArtEZ Press, and a publication about Vlisco edited by José Teunissen, part of a series of monographs about Dutch fashion designers, published by d'Jonge Hond, Modelectoraat ArtEZ and ArtEZ Press.

Store

For the duration of the exhibition the museum shop will carry Vlisco textiles that can be purchased in lengths of six yards.”

Thanks to the Africa Fashion Guide for the info.

African Textiles in Africaniste Art–an unusual case.

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.

African Textile Resources on our website updated–part three

Below is an excerpt from the section on important textile traditions covering Asante kente cloths:

Asante Kente Cloths

Kente is the best known and most widely appreciated of all African textiles, adopted throughout the African diaspora worldwide since the 1960s as a symbol of Pan-Africanism and Afrocentric identity. At the same time it continues to play a vital living role in the culture of its creators, the Asante (Ashanti) people of Ghana in West Africa. The story of kente is closely interwoven with that of the Asante Empire and its' Royal Court based at Kumase, deep in the forest zone of southern Ghana. One of the first accounts of Asante royal silk weaving comes from the 1730s when a man sent to the court of King Opokuware by a Danish trader observed that the king "brought silk taffeta and materials of all colours. The artist unravelled them ....woollen and silk threads which they mixed with their cotton and got many colours." Silk was also imported into Asante from southern Europe via the trans-Saharan caravan trade. Many kente cloths utilised silk for a range of decorative techniques on a background of warp-striped cotton cloth, but some of the finest cloths prepared for royal and chiefly use were woven wholly from silk. Although since the early decades of the C20th natural silk has been mostly replaced with artificial "rayon" fibres, the artistry of Asante weavers has continued to produce remarkably beautiful cloths.

Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh I wearing an Oyokoman kente cloth. 1926. Vintage postcard, author's collection.

The cloths woven in the nineteenth century for the court of the Asantehene, the king of the Asante empire were probably the ultimate achievement of the West African narrow-strip weavers art. The raw material for this artistry came from Europe in the form of silk fabrics which were carefully unpicked to obtain thread which could then be re-woven into narrow-strip cloth on looms that utilised two, and in some cases even three, sets of heddles to multiply the complexity of design. The king's weavers were and still are grouped in a village called Bonwire near the Asante capital of Kumase, part of a network of villages housing other craft specialists including goldsmiths, the royal umbrella makers, stool carvers, adinkra dyers, and blacksmiths. One Asante weavers' origin myth recalls that the first weaver, Otah Kraban, brought a loom back to Bonwire after a journey to the Bondoukou region of Côte D'Ivoire. An alternative legend recalls that during the reign of Osei Tutu the first weaver learnt his skill by studying the way in which a spider spun its web. The spider, Anansi, is an important figure symbolising trickery and wisdom in Asante folklore. Away from the court cotton weaving supplied much of the everyday dress for the Asante people, in the form of striped cloths, mostly of indigo blue and white, until it was largely displaced by wax prints and other imported textiles in the present century.

Silk man's kente in the "gold dust" pattern, early C20th

In many kente cloths the design effect is achieved by the alternation of regularly positioned blocks of pattern in bright coloured silk with the more muted colours of the warp-striped plain weave background. Interestingly it is the background designs, the configurations of warp stripes of varying widths, that provide the basis for most pattern names. As might be expected in a culture so interested in proverbs and verbal wordplay there is a large vocabulary of pattern names still remembered by elderly weavers. Some of these names, such as Atta Birago and Afua Kobi, refer to the individuals, in these cases two Queen Mothers, for whom the designs were first woven. Others refer to historical incidents, to household objects, to proverbs, or to certain circumstances of the cloths use.

Kente cloth weaver, early C20th postcard.

Most designs are produced by combining two distinct decorative techniques. The first, supplementary weft float, involves the addition of extra weft threads that do not form part of the basic structure of the cloth. Instead they float across sections of the ground weave, appearing on one face of the cloth over maybe six or eight warp then crossing through the warp to the back, floating there, then returning again to the top face. Rows of these wefts are arranged to form designs such as triangles, wedges, hour-glass shapes etc. Asante weavers distinguish loosely spaced floats, which they call "single weave", from more densely packed designs that conceal the background completely and are known as "double weave." The second effect is to create solid blocks of coloured thread across the cloth strip entirely concealing the warp. Without dwelling too much on the technicalities, this effect is achieved by the use of a technical innovation unique to the weaving of southern Ghana, namely the use of a second set of heddles that has the effect of bunching together groups of warp threads allowing them to be hidden by the weft. The design of most kente cloths involves framing areas of weft float decoration within the narrow solid bands called bankuo. The finest and most elaborate examples of this style and perhaps the most spectacular cloths ever woven in Africa, completely covered the underlying warp design with alternating sections exploiting the full range of weft float designs between very narrow bands, producing a cloth named Adwinasa, meaning "fullness of ornament."

Further Reading:
Adler,P. & Barnard,N. African Majesty (1992) - illustrates a great collection.
Clark Smith, S. "Kente Cloth Motifs" African Arts 9(1) (1975)
Lamb,V. West African Weaving (1975)
Menzel, B. Textilien aus Westafrika (1972)
Ofori-Ansah,K. Kente is more than a cloth (1993) - influential poster with interpretation of pattern meanings.
Rattray, R. Religion and Art in Ashanti (1927)
Ross,D. Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity(1998)

Click on the image to go to our gallery of Asante kente cloths for sale.

Back to African Textiles Introduction

African Textile Resources on our website updated – part two

An excerpt from the “African Textiles Introduction” section Types of Looms:

“Weaving, at its simplest, involves the regular interlacing of two sets of threads to create a textile. A loom is basically any kind of frame that facilitates this interlacing process. One set of threads (known as the warp) is fixed to the frame, while the second set (the weft) is manipulated in between one or more warps in an under/over fashion. Almost all looms have some means of separating alternate warps to speed up this interlacing process. Generally this involves string loops placed round every other warp, allowing the two groups to be pulled apart, creating a gap (called the shed) through which the weft is passed. This set of string loops is called a heddle. Looms where only one set of alternate warps are leashed to a heddle are called single-heddle looms. Looms where both sets are leashed to separate heddles are called double-heddle looms. In an influential book John Picton and John Mack have argued that the clearest method of classifying the many different types of loom found in Africa is to focus on this fundamental distinction in the weaving process itself, rather than looking at essentially peripheral features such as the position of the frame, the width of the cloth woven, or the gender of the weaver. See Picton & Mack "African Textiles" (1979.)

Hausa men using double heddle looms, weaving 1cm width strips to be dyed indigo for Tuareg veils, Kura, Nigeria, 2006

Hand loom weaving has been carried on in Africa since ancient times, although in most of the continent in the unfavourable climactic conditions mean that very few textiles of any antiquity have been preserved. The earliest African looms of which any knowledge survives are those recorded in the wall paintings of ancient Egyptian tombs. For sub-Saharan Africa the picture is less clear. Although some scholars have proposed a variety of external sources for the main loom types only the Arabian origin of the East African pit loom is securely established. The two other main forms of loom in wide use are the narrow-strip loom (a type of double-heddle loom) and vertically mounted single-heddle looms, both of which may well been local African inventions. The earliest known cloths associated with the double-heddle loom are the large number of textile fragments dating back to the eleventh century AD found in burial caves along the Bandiagara cliffs in the area of Mali inhabited today by the Dogon. The great Arab traveller al-Bakri described seeing what would appear to be a double-heddle narrow-strip loom in operation in the Mauretanian town of Silla in AD 1068. For the single-heddle loom there are tiny fragments excavated with the treasury of intricate brasswork dated to the ninth century AD found at Igbo Ukwu in Southeastern Nigeria.

Whatever its origins it is clear that the distribution of the skills of weaving on the narrow-strip loom, along with the tailoring and embroidery of men's robes, owes a lot to the long distance traders that criss-crossed West Africa dealing in a huge range of goods, both locally produced and imported from across the Sahara. Most of these traders were Muslims, and the demand for appropriate and prestigious Islamic attire certainly helped to promote the spread of textile technologies. In some areas the majority of weavers are themselves Muslims, although this is by no means always the case. Until very recently almost all double-heddle loom weaving was done by men, but now, particularly among the Yoruba in Nigeria, it is being taken up by large numbers of young women. Although there are innumerable variations in such features as the seating posture of the weaver, the use or other wise of a wooden frame, the shape of the heddle etc, an essentially similar loom, known as the narrow-strip treadle loom, is found across almost all of West African from Senegal to Lake Chad and the border areas of Cameroon. The key features of this loom are the use of a weighted drag-sled to tension the warp, a pair of suspended heddles operated by simple foot pedals, and the weaving of a single long, usually rather narrow strip of cloth, which is then cut up and sewn together edge to edge to create the finished fabric. The other, less widely distributed, double-heddle looms are: Middle Eastern looms used by urban Arab weavers in North Africa, the pit treadle loom used in Ethiopia and Somalia, frame looms of European colonial or missionary origin, and various hybrid tripod and tetrapod looms found in parts of Sierra Leone and Liberia

The tripod loom, Sierra Leone, circa 1900-10. Vintage Postcard, photographer W.S Johnston, authors collection.

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