Details

Title

Noblewoman's Ceremonial Overskirt

Artist/Maker

Mbeengi Artist, Kuba Kingdom

Date

nineteenth century or earlier

Medium

Raffia and embroidery

Dimensions

43 1/2 x 22 inches

Credit

Purchase with funds from the Friends of African Art and Joan N. Whitcomb in memory of Taylor Stuckey

Accession #

2008.1

On View

Currently not on view

The extremely fine stitching of this cloth’s embroidery, its complex patterns, and the irregular feature at one end—like a sketch done in thread—make it a masterpiece of central African textile art. Made for a woman of royal rank or high social status, it comes from the Mbeengi region of the northeast Kuba Kingdom. This textile’s all-embroidered ground and design layout, with a partitioning of the surface into multiple blocks of patterning, link it to the earlier artistic conventions of Kongo textile art, but its character remains distinctly Mbeengi.