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Francophone African Textile Gallery Part 2 Page 9 |
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CODE #: fr189 PRICE: US$795 Measurement: 139ins x 65ins, 353cm x 167cm Collected near Kumase in Ghana where Asante royal courts have a long tradition of using wool blankets traded down from the Sahel for display of court regalia, lining chiefly hammocks etc. This cloth has a wool warp and weft dyed in indigo and various shades of brown through yellow, using what look to be natural dyes. It is strip woven but the twelve inch wide strips run across the cloth rather than down as we might expect (ie run vertically in picture here.) It seems to me that this sewing could be a way of using a warp striped cloth to resemble a weft faced blanket with which people would be more familiar. There is unusual decorative effect in the sewing, which is done using two colours of wool. I have shown this cloth both to an expert on Malian wool blankets and to some authorities on North African weaving without being able to confirm its origin. Most likely it was woven on a ground loom in North Africa and traded south across the Sahara in the early part of the C20th.
(c) Duncan Clarke, Version 12/01/2007 |
