Woman's Strip-woven Wrapper

CultureEwe peoples

Dateearly 20th century

MediumCotton

DimensionsOverall: 56 1/2 × 109 3/4 inches (143.51 × 278.77 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the George H. and Elizabeth O. Davis Fund

Object number96-36/3

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

African Art

Terms

DescriptionThe textile consists of 17 strips of cloth sewn together. Each strip is composed of multicolored stripes which have been overlayed with "weft float" decoration that includes the representation of objects, animals, and humans.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

Strip-woven textiles are assembled from narrow strips of cloth woven on horizontal treadle looms. A largely male art, strip-weaving was introduced to western Africa via trans-Saharan trade routes almost 1,000 years ago. Since then, various regional traditions have emerged, the most renowned being the colorful strip-woven kente textiles of southern Ghana's Ewe and Asante peoples. This wrapper displays Ewe weavers' abundant use of geometric and representational designs. Ewe strip-woven cloth is worn for such special occasions as festivals, puberty rites, marriages, funerals and the ordination of priests or priestesses.

Provenance

With Mohr Textile Arts, New York, by May 1996;

Purchased from Mohr Textile Arts by Douglas Dawson, Chicago, IL, stock no. 6119, May-August 1996;

Purchased from Dawson by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1996.

NOTES:

[1] According to Douglas Dawson, in email correspondence with MacKenzie Mallon, Specialist, Provenance, July 17, 2022, NAMA curatorial files.

Published References

Newsletter (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Summer 1997): 3.

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