- Museum number
- Af1983,34.1
- Description
-
Cloth (ukara), a single sheet of imported cotton sheeting, stitch-dyed with a complicated pattern that has divided the cloth into 110 oblong panels of the same size, which are occupied by repeating geometric patterns and figures of animals including fish and turtles. Other animal figures have been over-laid on this grid, among them snakes and leopards.
- Production date
- 1950-1980 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 253 centimetres
-
Width: 177 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- This is now known as an 'ukara' cloth, which is used by the Ekpe Leopard Society (a secret society across various groups in Niger Delta, Cross River and Cameroons). See comment on Af1991,24.1.
This cloth was exhibited in the 1979 exhibition of African textiles at the BM, to which it was lent by Keith Nicklin and was acquired subsequently. A detail was reproduced in Picton & Mack, 'African Textiles', 1989 edition, p.151, which gives a reference to Keith Nicklin, ‘Guide to the National Museum, Oron’, Lagos 1977, pl.25. The text on p.152 records: ‘They are displayed at meetings and ceremonies of Ekpe, the Leopard Society of the Ejagham and Efik and other people of the Cross River area of Nigeria, and are covered with Ekpe motifs. They are made to order in northern Igboland.’
Duncan Clarke et al, 'African Textiles', 2022, pl.147, reproduces a very similar cloth in the Musée du Quai Branly as made by the Ezillo people in Ebonyi state in mid XXc. Both cloths are covered with nsibidi signs, understood only by initiates in Ekpe society. These small ukara cloths were worn as wrappers around the waist; much larger ones adorned the meeting houses of the society. See the photo taken in 1989 on p.21 of the same book which shows both sizes in use as waist cloths and as backdrops to a meeting.
This type of cloth is recorded by P Amaury Talbot (in the Delta area of Nigeria in 1914-16) as being “called by Igbo Okara, and by Kalabari Okuru. This is woven entirely of palm fibre or of cotton and palm”. In his monograph ‘Tribes of the Niger Delta, their religions and customs’, 1932, he records much about the cloth, which played a prominent part in Igbo ceremonial life (see his index under Okuru). His report makes it clear that he knew Ukara cloth in a much earlier stage of development and usage, and made of quite different materials than anything known today; unfortunately Talbot never gave any example to the BM with the rest of his collection.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1979-1982 Dec-Nov, London, Museum of Mankind (rooms 7 & 9), African Textiles.
1983 Jun-Dec, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, African Textiles.
- Acquisition date
- 1983
- Acquisition notes
- Purchased from Keith Nicklin of the Horniman Museum, and recorded in the purchase book as a "cotton textile, resist-dyed, from the Ibo, Nigeria, used by the Leopard Society in the Cross River area (as illustrated in 'African Textiles', pl.147)".
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Af1983,34.1
