Textile Traditions
Ways of getting pattern into cloth developed separately in each region, and the resulting patterns carried rank and even sentences, from West Africa to Java and Japan.
Dictionary entry
- Batik traditional–present / Technique
Javanese cloth resisted with wax and dyed over and over again. The line drawn by the canting builds a pattern system that also speaks of rank, region and rite.
- Kente 17th century– / Style
The strip-woven cloth of Ghana's Asante and Ewe gives every color and every pattern a name and a meaning, so that wearing it makes a statement.
- Bogolanfini traditional–present / Technique
Bamana cloth from Mali is drawn with fermented river mud. Iron reacting with plant dye yields a black-and-cream geometry that records story and protection.
- Tapa (Barkcloth) prehistory– / Technique
Across the Pacific islands, bark is beaten out into cloth. Geometric patterns stamped, drawn and smoked onto it serve as communal insignia in ritual and gift exchange, and every island keeps its own pattern system within this Pacific graphic language.
- Kanga 1880s– / Style
Women along the East African coast wear this printed cloth in a single piece. Its three-part composition of border, central image and Swahili proverb (jina) makes the act of wearing an act of speech.
- Mola late 19th century– / Technique
Guna women in Panama make reverse appliqué. Layers of colored cloth are cut back and stitched down until every contour ripples in several lines, printmaking in fabric that is worn daily as the panels of a blouse.
- Adire 19th century– / Technique
The indigo resist cloth of Yoruba women: raffia ties and cassava-paste painting and stenciling reserve white patterns against deep indigo, weaving proverbs and signs into the contrast.
- Shibori 8th century– / Technique
A technique in which cloth is stitched, bound or clamped between boards before dyeing, so that only the parts under pressure stay white. The result is left to the strength of the craftsman's hands and the movement of the cloth, and no two pieces come out alike even from the same pattern.
- Ikat ancient– / Technique
A technique in which the threads are bound and dyed before weaving, calculated so that the pattern appears only once the cloth is woven. A slight shift of the threads blurs the outline, and that wavering is the fingerprint of ikat. Design and chance live in the same process.
- Akwete late 19th century–present / Style
A textile developed by Igbo women in Akwete, southeastern Nigeria. Broad upright looms and supplementary weft build named chevrons, diamonds, animals, and apparent bands into dense fields of vivid color and occasional metallic thread.