Details

Title

Kente Cloth

Artist/Maker

Asante Artist, Ghana

Date

ca. 1900–1925

Medium

Silk

Dimensions

38 1/2 x 55 1/2 inches

Credit

Purchase with funds from Fred and Rita Richman

Accession #

2004.166

Location

Currently not on view

The brilliantly colorful, geometric patterns of this silk kente cloth fragment express a highly refined, strongly musical aesthetic sensibility that is at once subtle and sublime. One red accent floats across a rich field of rhythmically complex patterns in yellow, green, blue, black, and white. An exceptionally fine example of kente cloth, this section is from a much larger cloth called oyokoman adweneasa. Oyokoman is the name of the striped pattern of the ground weave in the warp threads. Made primarily of wide, dark red stripes on this cloth, the oyokoman pattern is considered the first and most elite of all kente patterns and has the longest and most complex history.

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