garment
- Museum number
- Af2004,04.1
- Description
-
Man's wrap-around garment made of silk (Asante kente), composed of 24 narrow strips joined at the selvedges by hand-sewn overcast stitch. Each strip has a plain weave warp pattern of broad gold and green stripes between red bands separated by narrow black and white stripes. Pattern bands are aligned horizontally across the cloth. Every block of plain weave is filled either with weft-faced solid colour bands or supplementary weft patterns. Unworked warp threads form fringes at both ends.
- Production date
- 1880-1920 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 296 centimetres (including fringes)
-
Width: 198 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Traditionally silk textiles were woven on commission from members of the court or chiefly elite among the Asante. This cloth is an example of a particular design of cloth known as 'adwinasa' ('fullness of ornament'); these textiles had weft designs inserted into every block of plain weave and demonstrated the weaver's technical mastery as well as symbolising the owner's wealth and prestige.
It was published with a commentary by Dr Duncan Clarke as an outstanding example of an Asante silk “adwinasa” in Hali 160 (Summer 2009). His text follows with his kind permission:
This cloth was one of a small group assembled in the 1970s by a Ghanaian dealer who discovered that the key to securing access to the Asante courts and their treasures was a ready supply of old brass bedsteads he shipped over from England. It remained in a London private collection until a few years ago when it was purchased and donated to the British Museum, which perhaps surprisingly given the long history of British contacts with the Asante lacked a kente cloth of this type and quality.
So why is this piece so exceptional? The background pattern type is not particularly unusual. Asante cloths are named after the colour and arrangement of the warp stripes, in this case the layout of a broad yellow and green stripe with narrow white stripes on a red ground was called “Oyokoman amponhema.” It is a variation of the more common “Oyokoman” that alludes to the Oyoko matrilineage of the Asante royal dynasty, while the Mamponhemaa is the Queen Mother of Mampon, an important subordinate kingdom. Asante weavers use a second pair of heddles to weave weft faced blocks and supplementary weft float motifs on the warp faced background strip. Here the entire surface area of the cloth is covered by a vast array of different weft float motifs framed by more regular border areas. This style of cloth, which seems to have been woven only on Oyokoman patterned backgrounds, is called adwinasa, meaning “fullness of ornament,” or alternatively adweneasa, meaning, “my skill is exhausted.”
On most kente there is a design interplay between the areas covered by weft motifs and the undecorated warp striped background. On the finest old silk examples tightly woven clusters of supplementary weft designs shine out like jewels from the more subdued colours of the background cloth. An adwinasa cloth, the ultimate text of a master weaver’s skill, lacks this contrast and in consequence, to my eyes at least, most examples look relatively flat and lifeless. Here though the master weaver has been able to surpass the constraints of the form and impart a lively vitality to the cloth, primarily by making only very limited use of the more densely woven “double weave” weft motifs to provide an irregular scattering of blocks of intense colour that draws in the eye to the great variety of the more subtle patterns.
Elsewhere Clarke has commented on the paucity of top quality Asante cloths compared with the large number of really fine Ewe cloths that have been seen. 'The same relative paucity of really superb Asante pieces was apparent last month when I had the opportunity to look through a published collection of Ghanaian cloths here in London that was assembled mainly in the 1980s. Top quality silk Asante cloths had densely woven blocks of weft design on a smaller, tighter, scale than more mundane pieces, creating a jewel like impact. Almost all would have been woven to order by weavers under court patronage rather than generally available to any man or woman rich enough to buy one, as was the case among the Ewe. However, as the large collections of Asante gold jewellery assembled in recent years testify, the inalienability of court regalia was more theoretical than actual. Some have no doubt been retained by local courts, while other would have decayed in poor storage conditions. Nevertheless I would suggest that the most likely reason for their extreme rarity is that very few of these top quality cloths were actually produced, in contrast to the large number of more everyday pieces. Sadly, despite the wide interest in kente there has yet to be a detailed and extended piece of published field research on Asante weavers so we have no way of knowing how much time weavers spent on court orders, what the range of cloths was that different weavers produced and related questions. It seems to me likely that the collections assembled by Brigitte Menzel and Venice Lamb in the late 1960s and early 1970s actually encompass quite a significant proportion of the surviving examples.'
- Location
- On display (G25/dc10)
- Condition
- Good; stitching on seams loose or missing in places. Small holes along one side.
- Acquisition date
- 2004
- Acquisition notes
- Donated to the Museum by Antony Griffiths as a tribute to John Mack (Keeper of Ethnography from 1990-2004). The cloth was purchased by the donor from textile expert and dealer Dr Duncan Clarke in 2004 for presentation to the BM.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Af2004,04.1
