I. Before the monsoon winds brought the others

We were naked and without shame. We wore loincloths made from furs, skins and hides. Spun cotton, wool, silk, jute, sisal and flax. Adorned ourselves in seeds, bones, leaves, ivory, raffia, brass, wood, seashells, grass, gold and feathers. We beautified ourselves with ash, ochre, charcoal, mud and clay. We prepared dyes from earth, smoke, bark, leaves, fruits, flowers, seeds and the roots of plants and trees. Our immense knowledge and ingenuity as weavers, spinners, dyers, smiths, bead and leather workers, came from an understanding of the very fabric of life. We invented bogolanfini, aso oke, kente, lubugo, bazin, ndop, kondi-gulei, ukara, kaasa and kuba.

II. Makers of functional art

Cloth and culture are intertwined. In African society, key stages of human existence—birth, puberty, marriage, death and afterlife—were marked by ritual and special garb. Each element conveyed messages about the community’s philosophical, religious and moral values along the lines of gender and social class.

Among the Venda tribe of Southern Africa, men wore a tsindi, a triangular-shaped cover made from soft goat, klipspringer or duiker skin. It went between the legs and was tied at the back. Young girls wore a shedo, a small goatskin apron until they hit puberty then they’d add a nwenda, a type of blanket that covered their upper bodies. Older married women wore the tshirivha, a goatskin apron that covered the front and back.

East African coastal communities used the kisutu, a sari-like fabric with wide borders on either end and small patterns in the centre to swaddle newborn babies. Popular at weddings as well, the fabric’s black, red and white patterns represented the pain of deflowering, the bride’s virginity and groom’s seed respectively. In West Africa, the Akan people wore a red cloth while in mourning and the Ashanti dressed in white adinkra cloths to mark their departed’s arrival in the spirit world.

Adinkra cloth made of cotton dyed with stamped or hand-drawn patterns, 1817

While African practices and beliefs largely remained static, cloth and its accompanying adornments had a transmutable nature. They told an ever-evolving story of the wearer; serving as significant markers of personal worth, social value and occupation. A West African diviner, a nganga, was known by his wild animal skins, bird feathers and fearsome strings of animal teeth or bones. A hunter in the same region would have worn a brown bogolanfini shirt adorned with amulets, horns and other traditional medicine to help improve his effectiveness.

Garments and textiles stratified communities. West African kente with its gold string patterns, coral beads and embroidery was the preserve of kings and chiefs. It was handmade in dazzling and precise measurements. Men’s cloth came in twenty four strips and was worn as one piece wrapped around the body, toga-style, while women either wore one large piece or a combination of two or three pieces of varying sizes ranging from five to twelve strips.

The Igbo covered ukara cloth with nsibidi–a pictographic language system developed by the Ekoi/Ejagham people of Nigeria and Cameroon. It was later adopted by the surrounding Ebe, Efik, Ibibio and Igbo tribes. Ukara was an indigo stitched and dyed cloth traditionally worn as a wrapper by high-ranking members of the society. It was also used as a backdrop in the throne rooms of chiefs and kings.

Ukara cloth cage during Ikot Ekpe ritual in 2009 

Unsurprisingly, African fabric and textiles held high economic value when trade began. Local cloth production is reported as early as the 12th century in East Africa. The great Benin City was interacting with Portuguese traders by the 1400s. Influences from Islamic, Berber, and Mediterranean cultures had a bearing on textile design and workmanship. Around 1846, the Dutch wax print known as ankara, originally an Indonesian batik cloth, was introduced to the continent. The fabric’s production co-opted African symbolism, pattern-making and colour theories. In time, this fabric would infiltrate the culture to the point of becoming ubiquitously known as the African fabric. However, it was Europe’s pillage and conquest of Africa spurred by the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 that interfered the most with the African psyche regarding indigenous fabric and textiles.

The outsiders decimated not only our garments and ornaments, but stamped out the knowledge we needed to make them, and stole the time we used to fashion them for each other

After the monsoon winds brought the others, we began to see ourselves as ashamedly naked. The outsiders decimated not only our garments and ornaments, but stamped out the knowledge we needed to make them, and stole the time we used to fashion them for each other. We were chewed up and spat out as second-rate clones of the ideal other. We exist now as vanishing echoes of who we used to be, with only the aged, dying and dead having first-hand experience of our ways, our dances, our customs and our rituals. We are slowly inching towards a time when no single soul will remember who we really were.

III. Archivists of a living tradition

Terra nullius is a Latin expression that means “nobody’s land”. It is one of many abhorrent legal arguments used to erase the original habitants of African nations. It legitimised state occupation and colonisation. It caused a violent transplantation of people from all that they knew. Some travelled further from home than most, on slave ships to the Caribbean islands and the Americas; others eventually found themselves in emergency villages and bantustans in their own homelands. These separations caused the destruction of languages, cultures and identities; the intangible assets of a community.

African art and artisans managed to survive for a time. These items and skills had an innate economic value undeniable even in the New World—at least until the Industrial Revolution. Handmade crafts were considered exotic and collectable. Textile production that required extensive processes of weaving, dyeing and printing was taxed and exploited but allowed to continue. These trades were viewed as non-threatening vestiges of an extinguished indigenous culture.

The weavers, spinners, dyers, smiths, bead and leather workers adapted and stayed in business through this period of subjugation. However, they found that their Western-educated children did not follow in their footsteps. Further, there were no schools dedicated to preserving any of the old ways. The symbolic meanings, the complex motifs and the secret mastery  of African craftsmanship were all but lost. Then came the 1960s. African nations gained independence in droves and with each passing decade, their citizens were becoming better reacquainted with themselves.

Through it all, the artisans persisted.

 Eritrean woman wearing headscarf and decorated face-covering and Eritrean man holding traditional shield and spear, c.1943-1946

Quietly toiling away; weaving, embroidering, printing, carving, smithing and sewing. Making it all by hand and teaching anyone who was willing to learn. This dutiful stewardship would come to inspire contemporary designers such as Senegal’s Johanna Bramble who learnt ancestral weaving traditions from a manjak weaver. Laduma Ngxokolo was inspired to create Maxhosa, his South African knitwear line, after undergoing Xhosa initiation (See feature image). The designer wanted to explore knitwear solutions suitable for amakrwala (Xhosa initiates) that also celebrated traditional aesthetics.

The decisive shift from forgotten art to valuable cultural heritage enterprise has turned beadwork into a lifeline for Turkana, Pokot and Samburu women in Northern Kenya who operate under a state organised super cooperative called Ushanga. There is even space now for both homage and experimentation where African garments and accessories are highly textural, cerebral and transcendent. This is evident in offerings by Loza Maléombho (Ivory Coast), Nkwo (Nigeria), Katush (Kenya), Papa Oppong (Ghana), IAMISIGO (Nigeria), Patricia Mbela (Kenya), Lukhanyo Mdingi (South Africa), Dickens Otieno (Kenya), Lagos Space Programme (Nigeria), Moshions (Rwanda), Kiko Romeo (Kenya), Hawii (Ethopia), Hisi Studio (Kenya), Emmy Kasbit (Nigeria), Doreen Mashika (Zanzibar) and Mono (Togo).

These designers are part of a conscious movement towards the reclamation of traditional African craftsmanship. It is fashion that merges the spiritual with the aesthetic; the cultural with the futuristic to create wearable art.

• Featured image shows Maxhosa at the ‘Tradition(al)’ exhibition curated by Sunny Dolat in Nairobi. Photo by Ian Gichohi
• Other images sourced from The British Museum, by Jordan Fenton and Bristol Archives: British Empire & Commonwealth Collection (in this order)
• Written by journalist, curator and filmmaker Wanjeri Gakuru (pictured on the right) from Kenya.