| Textile
Resources
Home Page here
Adire gallery - view
adire we have for sale here
Adire Links:
Social
Fabric - Denver Museum of Anthropology
Adire
- a German introduction
Contemporary Adire
& Batik Art - fine exhibit of the work of Nike
(Davies) Olaniyi
Adire References:
Barbour,J. 1970.
"Nigerian 'Adire' Cloths" - Baessler-Archiv, Neue Folge, Band
XVIII - if you can find it this gives the most detailed account of cloth
designs.
Barbour,J.
& Simmonds,D. eds. 1971. Adire Cloth in Nigeria. (Ibadan)
Beier,
U. 1997. A Sea of Indigo, Yoruba Textile Art (Peter Hammer Verlag,
Wuppertal)
Byfield,
J. 2002. The Bluest Hands: A social and economic history of women dyers
in Abeokuta (Nigeria), 1890-1940 (Heinemann/ James Currey)
Poliakoff, C. African
Textiles and Dyeing Techniques (1982) Chapter 4
National Museum of
African Art. (1997). Adire: Resist-Dyed Cloths of the Yoruba.
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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Adire
is the name given to indigo dyed cloth produced by Yoruba women
of south western Nigeria using a variety of resist dye
techniques. Adire translates as tie and dye, and the earliest
cloths were probably simple tied designs on locally-woven
hand-spun cotton cloth much like those still produced in Mali.
In the early decades of the twentieth century however, the new
access to large quantities of imported shirting material made
possible by the spread of European textile merchants in certain
Yoruba towns, notably Abeokuta, enabled women dyers to become
both artists and entrepreneurs in a booming new medium. New
techniques of resist dyeing were developed, most notably the
practice of hand-painting designs on the cloth with a cassava
starch paste prior to dyeing. This was known as adire eleko.
Alongside these a new style was soon developed that speeded up
decoration by using metal stencils cut from
the sheets of tin that lined tea-chests. Another method was to
use sewn raffia, sometimes in combination with tied sections,
while other cloths were simply folded repeatedly and tied or
stitched in place. The basic
shape of the cloth is that of two pieces of shirting material
stitched together to create a women's wrapper cloth. Most of the
designs were named, and popular designs included the jubilee
pattern, (first produced for the jubilee of George V and Queen
Mary in 1935), Olokun or "goddess of the sea", and
Ibadadun "Ibadan is sweet."
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Detail of
an adire eleko cloth in the classic Ibadandun design.
Circa 1960. Photo: Duncan Clarke |
In the 1920s and
30s adire was a major local craft in the towns of Abeokuta and
Ibadan, attracting buyers from all over West Africa but by the
end of the decade problems over quality caused by the spread of
synthetic indigo and caustic soda, coupled with an influx of new
less skilled entrants into the craft, led to a collapse in
demand from which it never really recovered. The more complex
and beautiful starch resist designs continued to be produced
until the early 1970s, but despite a revival prompted largely by
the interest of US Peace Corp workers in the 1960s, never
regained their earlier popularity. Today simplified stencilled
designs and some better quality tie & die and stitch-resist
designs are still produced, but local taste favours
multi-coloured wax-resist cloth usually known as "kampala,"
though a few people still call this adire. Good examples
of the older styles are getting harder and harder to find in
Nigeria, and in a few years time these masterpieces of indigo
dyeing may have disappeared altogether.To View
Our Adire Cloths CLICK HERE
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