Kuba artists decorated nearly every available surface—including those of everyday objects, such as this cup used for drinking palm wine—with complex networks of geometric patterns. City walls and rectangular houses were made of mats plaited with geometric patterns; women’s bodies formerly were adorned with similar maze-like scarification marks. Of the more than two hundred named patterns used to adorn these various surfaces, one was inspired by the pattern of the tire tread left by a missionary’s motorbike during the 1920s. The pattern commemorated the Kuba king Kot Mabinc, who ruled at the time.