West African textile patterns

West Africa is deservedly well known for the number, breadth and quality of its cultural and artistic traditions, which remain vibrant in the face of rapid urban growth and the increasing influence of western mass "popular" culture and economic institutions. Despite these homogenizing trends, even the most casual tourist visiting Abidjan, Accra, Dakar, Lagos or Lomé is stricken by the breathtaking variety of prints and colors used for the everyday clothes of its residents. In Dakar, my experience was that if I visited a bank or other office each day throughout the week, the dress of a given individual (whether he or she is a clerk, secretary, manager or executive) from one day to the next is generally mixed between western business attire and local modern "indigenous" styles. The grand boubou (a traditional men's robe or woman's dress), is omnipresent on the street and in the banks and government offices of West African capitals.

The social uses of textiles are an important aspect of understanding their role in West African culture. As noted by Cordwell in her appendix to Nielsen (1979:495) "The batiks remained the favorite cloth for wrapped skirts. This particular use of the latter made it possible for the cloths with a political or commemorative motif to be used by the Africans to make quiet but effective commentary on the existing establishment. This was done by positioning the printed portrait of British or French rulers or their own political leaders in such a way that one could 'innocently' and irreverently sit upon them. Some days such a print could be worn upside down 'accidentally'."

This page presents some examples of West African textiles from a small personal collection, which represent a few of the many different methods of textile printing and production techniques commonly found throughout the region. Both industrial prints produced in large factories (and closely reflecting current themes in popular culture) and prints produced by more traditional methods are available in the market stalls of the city. These images were produced by placing the cloth directly on a scanner, and were manipulated to minimize the size of the files by reducing the image resolution and colors represented.

Batik, a traditional technique from Java, Indonesia, in which a wax resist is applied by hand, was introduced into Africa by European traders. The designs were successful with African consumers, so local producers learned the techniques (this example is from Nigeria). This piece was produced by a women's crafts cooperative and imported for sale in the U.S. It was purchased at the 1995 ASA meeting in Orlando.

An industrial print produced by the Société de Teintre et Blanchissement Africaine (SOTIBA) factory in Dakar, is somewhat imitative of batik. It was purchased in the market there.

Traditional stitch-and-dye (a method, similar to tie-dye, of creating a resist-pattern with waxed thread, where the natural indigo is not absorbed by the cloth) from Guinea. Such cloth is often simply called guinée. I bought this from a woman who brought a suitcase full of these pagnes (wrap-around skirts) from Conakry to Dakar for sale among her friends and relatives there.

Industrial "wax" print, a method developed for export to Africa from Europe, imitates Java batik with machine production techniques (Nielsen 1979). In this case (from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire) the effect is somewhat different. Purchased in Dakar, 1990.

Further reading

Boser-Sarivaxevanis, Renée. 1972.
Les tissus de l'Afrique occidentale. (In: Basler Beitrage zur Ethnologie, Bd. 13). Bale, Pharos-Verlag H. Schwabe.

Boser-Sarivaxevanis, Renée. (1980?).
West African textiles and garments: from the Museum fur Volkerkunde Basel. (Textiles exhibited at University Gallery, Minneapolis campus, May 5-June 8, 1980; Garments exhibited at Goldstein Gallery, St. Paul campus, May 7-June 10, l980). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.

Boone, Catherine. 1992.
Merchant capital and the roots of state power in Senegal, 1930-1985. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cordwell, Justine M. and Ronald A. Schwarz (eds.). 1979.
The Fabrics of culture : the anthropology of clothing and adornment.  The Hague and New York: Mouton. ISBN: 9027979103.

Eicher, Joanne Bubolz. 1976.
Nigerian handcrafted textiles. Ile-Ife, Nigeria: University of Ife Press.

Idiens, Dale and K.G. Ponting (eds). 1980.
Textiles of Africa. Bath, England: Pasold Research Fund.

Nielsen, Ruth. 1979.
"The history and development of wax-printed textiles intended for West Africa and Zaire." pp. 467-498 in Cordwell and Schwarz. The Fabrics of culture : the anthropology of clothing and adornment. With an appendix by Justine Cordwell, "The use of printed batiks by Africans."

Picton, John (with Rayda Becker et al.). 1995.
The art of African textiles: technology, tradition, and lurex. London: Barbican Art Gallery, Lund Humphries Publishers. (Published to accompany an exhibition of the same title held at the Barbican Art Gallery, Sept. 21 - Dec. 10, 1995).

Sieber, Roy. 1972.
African textiles and decorative arts. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Wahlman, Maude and Enyinna Chuta. 1979.
"Sierra Leone resist-dyed textiles." pp. 447-466 in Cordwell and Schwarz. The Fabrics of culture : the anthropology of clothing and adornment.

My sincere thanks go out to Leslie W. Rabine of UC-Irvine for her comments and suggestions regarding this bibliography.

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