textile;
wrapper
- Museum number
- Af1934,0307.146
- Description
-
Woman’s wrapper (women’s weave) composed of two white warp-faced panels with indigo stripes, sewn together along the centre by a few tacks. The two panels are similar but not identical. Each has a warp that is mostly of white cotton, while the weft at the two short ends has two bands of white cotton, but at the very end and along the centre has alternating lines of white and lightly-dyed indigo cotton. Each panel has two bands of patterning along the warp in two shades of indigo; these four bands are, however, each somewhat different in patterning, and the outermost band along the bottom of the cloth has a broad area of indigo alone without any use of white cotton. All the thread is handspun, and the warp ends have been tied together to form tassels.
- Production date
- 1900-1913 (between)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 165 centimetres (including fringe)
-
Width: 93 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- The 1934 acquisition register records this cloth as coming from Rabba, near Lokoja (near the Niger-Benue confluence), and adds that its value some years before 1914 was 1/3d. This information must have come from the donor, who must have found it in the firm’s records. Lokoja was a trading town rather than a manufacturing town, and it is likely that the cloth was imported there from somewhere in Nigeria. But it is not known where they were made.
Two very similar cloths which must share the same origin are Af1934,0307.147 and 148.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1934
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Af1934,0307.146
