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.

Browse Related Artwork

Punch Pot

Unidentified Maker

Moon Series C
Moon Series C

Lynn Chadwick