cloth
- Museum number
- Af1981,09.12
- Description
-
Cloth, a rectangular woman’s wrapper (of men’s weave), composed of fifteen strips of hand-woven cloth sewn together lengthwise. The strips are of unequal width, varying from very narrow to merely narrow, and employ five different patterns, two of which are completely different in colour and appearance from the other three. The white and blue yarn used is hand-spun local cotton, the blue being indigo-dyed. The red and yellow
yarns are imported from Europe. The variety of structure of this cloth is by far the most complicated of any in the British Museum’s African collection, and defeats any brief description. It employs a very wide variety of techniques, including supplementary weft, openwork, and a brocading of white over white: see the detailed photograph attached to this record. The ends have been hemmed.
- Production date
- 1870-1880 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 156 centimetres
-
Width: 128 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Reproduced as plate 132 in Duncan Clarke et al, ‘African Textiles’, 2022. This is an astonishing and unparalleled cloth. It stands apart from the other cloths in the Johnstone group, which all appear to belong to a single (unidentified) tradition. See comment on Af1981,09.5.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1981
- Acquisition notes
- See Af1981,09.1 for comment on the collection, and its provenance and dating.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Af1981,09.12
