textiles

HAND WOVEN STRIPS OF CLOTH

The Ashanti People of Central Ghana have been weaving Kente Cloth for hundreds of years. This beautiful textile carries a great deal of significance in both the motifs and colors chosen.

The Ewe People of the Volta Region weave their own Kente Cloth. It differs from Ashanti cloth in color and motif, and is equally beautiful.

Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso produce beautiful striped pieces of broadloom cloth in a variety of colors and sizes.

All these textiles are woven on looms, by trained artisans.

INDIGO CLOTH

Indigo in West Africa was obtained from local plant sources, either indigofera or lonchocarpus cyanescans. Transforming the raw material into a successful dye vat was a complex process requiring great expertise and liable to un-explained failure. Inevitably it was usually surrounded with ritual prescriptions and prohibitions. The primary ingredients were dried balls of crushed leaves from indigo bearing plants, ash, and the dried residue from old vats. Cloth had to be dipped repeatedly in the fermented dye, exposed briefly to the air, then re-immersed. The number of dippings,  and the strength and freshness of the dye determined the intensity of the resulting colour. After the dyed cloth had dried it was customary to beat the fabric repeatedly with wooden beaters, which both pressed the fabric and imparted a shiny glaze. In some areas additional indigo paste was beaten into the cloth at this stage, subsequently rubbing off on the skin of the wearer in a much desired effect.

This ancient technique is still widely used in West Africa today. Most of Tro Tro Trading Company's pieces of Indigo come from Mali and Burkina Faso.

MUDCLOTH (BOGOLA)

After hand weaving white cotton cloth, the following steps are followed to make mudcloth. The cloth is washed in boiling water to shrink it to its final size. After drying, it is then soaked in a special solution of pounded leaves from the Bogolon tree, which is native to Mali, the cengura tree. The solution used is a dark solution and enables the fabric to absorb the mud dye. The cloth now takes on a yellowish color, which will fade slightly while drying in the sun. The mud dye is made from iron rich mud, collected from ponds mixed with water, set aside and allowed to ferment for up to a year, allowing it to become black. This mud is then used to paint designs on the cloth, being sure to saturate the area with the mud dye. The mud dye is painted on the cloth using sticks, reeds, strips of bamboo, palm fiber brushes, feathers and other tools, only the background is painted leaving the design untouched. The active ingredient in the mud dye is iron oxide, which is converted by tannic acid in the leaf solutions into a dye of iron tannate.

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BATIK

Using hand cut stamps made from rubber foam or wood, these one of a kind fabrics are created with wax and dyes. Often times Ghanaian Batik utilizes Adinkra symbols, or popular symbols that date far back into Akan Culture. Adinkra symbols can be seen throughout this website, at the bottom of each page.

TIE AND DYE

Using various folding and tying techniques, African Tie and Dye differs from its Western cousin, "Tie-dye". The graphic designs that emerge are bold and distinct. Even within different African countries, the techniques and pattern vary.

WAX PRINTS

This machine made fabric, pictured left, is very popular and widely distributed in West African Marketplaces. There are countless different designs and colors available.

NSAA
A type of hand-woven fabric
Symbol of excellence, genuineness, authenticity
According to "The Adinkra Dictionary" by W. Bruce Willis, the nsaa symbols reflects a saying:
"nea onnim nsaa oto n'ago", which he translates as "He who does not know authentic Nsaa will buy the fakes."
The quality of Nsaa has come to represent quality of workmanship in general.