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Resources
Home Page here
Adinkra gallery - view
adinkra we have for sale here
Adinkra Links:
Adinkra-
Republic of Ghana site
Social
Fabric - Denver Museum of Anthropology
Akan
Cultural Symbols Project
Meanings
of Symbols on Adinkra Cloth
Adinkra
Symbols
& search Google for
many more
Adinkra References:
Bowdich, T.E. Mission
from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (1819) - important early
reference.
Rattray, R.S. Religion
and Art in Asante (1927) Chapter 25. - the vital source.
McLeod, M.D. The
Asante (1981) - good survey of Asante art.
Polakoff, C. African
Textiles and Dyeing Techniques (1982) Chapter 5
Quarcoo, A.K. The
Language of Adinkra Patterns (1972)
Mato, Daniel (1986). Clothed
in symbols - the art of Adinkra among the Akan of Ghana. Doctoral
dissertation, Department of Fine Arts, Indiana University,
Bloomington, IN.
National Museum of
African Art. (1997). Adinkra: The cloth that speaks.
Prussin, L. Hatumere:
Islamic Design in West Africa (1986) Chapter 8
Click on the image
below to visit our gallery of images of African dress on
vintage postcards:
(c)Duncan Clarke, Version
10/30/2002 |
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Adinkra
is the only African cloth printing tradition of pre-Colonial
origin. It is one of the prestigious royal crafts produced in
villages around the Asante capital Kumase, in this case being
almost entirely confined to the village of Ntonso and the Kumase
district of Asokwa. According to
Asante legend it was introduced in 1818 following the capture of
a rival monarch by the name of Adinkra, who wore the cloth to
express his sorrow on being taken to Kumase. Adinkra involves
the printing of designs in a black dye made from the bark of
certain trees, using stamps carved from sections of calabash.
The earliest examples in museum collections are printed on
locally woven cloth, and this is still done today, but for most
of the twentieth century the use of imported cloth as a
background has been more common. The plain cloth is pegged out
on a flat piece of ground ready to be decorated. The artist
begins by marking out the grid of lines using a device like a
broad toothed comb. Once this is complete he fills in one square
at a time, recharging the stamp in the dye each time before
pressing it lightly onto the cloth. Sometimes two or more
designs are alternated in a single square, more usually each
square has a distinct motif. On older cloths the sections are
usually joined by multicoloured cotton stitching.
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An official of
the court of the Asantehene, king of the Asante people of
Ghana, wearing an old adinkra cloth, Kumase 1997.(c)
D.Clarke |
Proverbs play
an important role in Asante culture, their use being a mark of
wisdom and cultural knowledge. Like many other aspects of Asante
art, many of the Adinkra stamp designs are named by reference to
proverbs, while others have naturalistic referents. Some of the
links on this page give good accounts of these design names. Nevertheless
it doesn't seem that the cloth as a whole is intended to be
"read" or decoded. The communicative import of the
cloth was instead conveyed by the colour, with red, brown, and
black cloths associated in the past with funerals and periods of
mourning, while white cloths were worn for post-mourning
celebrations and joyous occasions more generally. Today they
have taken on a more general significance as an important and
unique form of African textile artistry. Adinkra symbols are
found in numerous contexts both in Ghana and in the United
StatesTo View
Our Adinkra Cloths CLICK HERE
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