cloth
- Museum number
- Af1981,09.5
- Description
-
Cloth, a single hand-woven long rectangular panel (woman’s weave), perhaps a waist or shoulder cloth, made of hand-spun white and indigo cotton and imported European red cotton yarn. The warp is composed of three broad bands of pattern: in the centre is a band of white cotton, all the decoration being supplied in the weft. Flanking this on either side are two identical bands, in which the warp alternates single threads of red and indigo-dyed cotton with the exception of the outer edge which is only of indigo. The area with mixed thread is divided into three equal widths by single lines of white cotton. A chequerboard effect is created in these three widths by adding supplementary weft lines of indigo in squares, which, by overlying the alaari, give the effect of blue; this contrasts with the alternating squares of indigo and red. The ground weft across the whole width is entirely of white cotton. In the central band (alone) extra decoration is created (a) by weaving in three lines of openwork, where holes are created by binding the warp threads together; and (b) by weaving in supplementary threads of indigo and red over the surface of the cloth (a form of brocading: the threads are held in place by warp threads, and the pattern is barely visible on the back of the cloth) to form geometrical patterns that extend over most of the surface of the central band. The warp ends have been left as a short fringe.
- Production date
- 1870-1880 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 99 centimetres
-
Width: 30 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Af1981,09.5 to 13 (with the exception of 12) share similar characteristics (including the use of float wefts and openwork) that link them together, and this suggests that they belong to a single weaving tradition that has as yet not been identified. Since so far as is known cotton weaving was never carried out in the Niger Delta, these cloths must have been imported from a nearby area. They could be an early variety of Yoruba cloth, perhaps from the Ijebu area, but Dr Duncan Clarke thinks that the small scale float patterns on these cloths are more reminiscent of later Igbo motifs, and suggests that they come from some Igbo group, perhaps the Asaba, along the lower Niger. He observes that in the XXc and presumably earlier the "canoe houses" of the Delta accumulated clothes of all sorts from any available sources. So these could have come down the Niger, or perhaps from the Cross River, although there is less evidence for the weaving in that area.
- 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
- Af1981,09.5
