Noblewoman's Ceremonial Overskirt
Mbeengi Artist, Kuba Kingdom

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.
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