Return to main galleryl

Cape Verde Panos Gallery

Cape Verde is a remote archipelago of small islands some 500 km west of Senegal. Uninhabited when discovered by the Portuguese in the C15th the islands soon supported a small population of colonists and a larger number of Africans brought as  slaves from the Guinea Coast  to work plantations and re-supply passing ships. Cotton was grown on the islands and by the C17th men on Brava, Santiago, and Fogo were weaving fine textiles that proved to be highly popular on the African coast. The narrow strip double heddle loom weaving technique that the slaves had brought from Africa was combined with designs drawn from the Portuguese tradition (itself influenced by the long presence of Islam in the Iberian peninsular.) A vivid blue colour was obtained from locally grown indigo and a lichen called orchil (Litmus roccella.) In order to facilitate weaving the more complex patterns the basic double heddle loom form was modified to a simple draw loom by the use of a number of extra heddles, which could be manipulated by a second weaver seated alongside the loom. The cloths woven were six strip wrappers with supplementary weft patterns aligned between strips across the cloths. In the C18th and early C19th several thousand cloths per year were exported, forming an important commodity in the coastal slave trade. Demand declined following abolition and in the C20th smaller numbers continued to be woven for local use. Women wear panos as sashes tied around the waist both for everyday use and on special occasions. Although imported thread has long been used by Cape Verde weavers (including on some pieces dating from circa 1900 in the British Museum) since about the 1960s black cotton thread imported from Senegal has completely displaced local hand spun cotton. The number of weavers declined sharply and today including a couple of small artisanal centres there are perhaps a few dozen weavers still active. 

A few old ladies in more remote villages still have old textiles handed down from their mothers. Old hand woven. The best known Cape Verde textiles are extremely elaborate pieces called panos d'obra bicho, completely covered in supplementary weft float patterns. As yet we have not been able to locate any of these. Simpler panos d'obra intersperse the weft float patterning with plain areas as shown here. Less elaborate still are cloths with names such as pano cha, pano singelo, and pano de terra (the distinction between these is somewhat unclear, to me anyway.) These more modest cloths draw on patterns that are of considerable antiquity in Africa, as evidenced by the Telem textile fragments dating from the C11th found in Mali, and clearly draw on the design heritage of the early enslaved weavers. Visually there are close similarities to some of the Malian blankets such as we show on our Francophone gallery, but the weight and texture of the Cape Verde cloths is much lighter and finer. As such then these pieces reflect a fascinating aspect of West African textile history as well as being beautiful and rare fabrics in their own right. 

Links:

The Capeverdean pano - a unique handicraft

Further reading:

Antonio Carreira Panaria Cabo-Verdiano-Guineense (Lisbon, 1968)

Lamb, Venice Looms Past and Present (Roxford, 2005)

Mesquitela, Isabel Borges Pereira: O pano artesanal da República da Guiné-Bissau (1996)

Full details of size of each cloth, together with price and ordering information, can be found with a larger picture by clicking on the thumbnail images. Please be patient as the images may take a minute to download. As with all our cloths we guarantee a full refund if you are not satisfied with any order.

(c) Duncan Clarke, Version 3/30/2006