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Object Timeline
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Kente Prestige Cloth (Ghana)
This is a Kente prestige cloth. It is dated early–mid-20th century and we acquired it in 2007. Its medium is cotton, mercerized cotton and its technique is hand-loomed weft-faced plain weave. It is a part of the Textiles department.
The strip-woven cloths of the Asante and Ewe peoples of Western Africa, in present-day Ghana and Togo, are made exclusively by men on portable, drag-weighted looms. The weaving of plain white strips by men for use as currency goes back hundreds of years; most of the textiles produced are plain white or decorated with simple indigo stripes or checks. A small number of highly colored and patterned prestige cloths, however, commonly known as kente cloth, are produced to be worn for important religious and ceremonial events. The cloths are worn toga-style by both men and women.
While the width of the woven strips may vary from 1 to 15 inches, they are most commonly 3½ to 5 inches. The weaver makes a single continuous strip that is then cut into lengths and sewn together selvedge to selvedge to form a wider cloth. Designs are created by incorporating colored threads in the warp to produce vertical stripes, adding colored threads in the weft to make checks, using colored threads of a heavier weight in the weft to create horizontal stripes, or by supplementary weft patterning (brocading). The finished cloths often have a basket-like or checkerboard effect from the alternation of vertically- and horizontally-striped areas, sporadically enhanced with brocaded motifs.
The early 20th-century textile under consideration is most similar to an Ewe type called gbeski susuavor, indicating that “all design and art came into play” because there are no areas of simple warp (vertical) striping. This means that the entire piece is composed of combinations of weft (horizontal) stripes. In lieu of the traditional checkerboard effect there is a constant interplay of horizontal elements across the strips. Warp striping is simpler but also unvarying, because the loom is warped only once. The weft is inserted by hand, so each color choice is at the discretion of the weaver. This piece also has particularly subtle coloration and fine weaving.
It is credited Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund.
- Mantle (Peru)
- warp: cotton; weft: silk, metallic (silver strips wrapped around linen core).
- Gift of John Pierpont Morgan.
- 1902-1-782
- Blanket (kaasa) (Nigeria)
- hand-spun wool, cotton.
- Gift of Mrs Calvin W. Stillman.
- 1969-11-10
- Textile, Causeway
- cotton.
- Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund.
- 2007-5-1
Our curators have highlighted 11 objects that are related to this one. Here are three of them, selected at random:
- Textile, Kilometer 177 ½
- cotton, leather, silk, linen, wool.
- Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund.
- 2006-13-6
- Textile, Nines
- mercerized cotton double weave.
- Gift of Richard Landis.
- 2018-15-2
- Fragment (Peru)
- cotton warp, wool weft.
- 1962-1-1
Its dimensions are
H x W: 320 × 194.3 cm (10 ft. 6 in. × 6 ft. 4 1/2 in.)
Cite this object as
Kente Prestige Cloth (Ghana); cotton, mercerized cotton; H x W: 320 × 194.3 cm (10 ft. 6 in. × 6 ft. 4 1/2 in.); Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund; 2007-8-1
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition David Adjaye Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection.
