5-31 Kente Cloth in Bonwire

 Today we are driving out to Bonwire to the Kente Cloth museum.

The cloth samples on the left are the oldest.  All of these samples are made the same way that they currently do it.  Each strip is about 4" wide.  You make enough of the strips to form your pattern and sew them together.

Each tiny pattern has its own name and its own meaning.  

This pattern is one of the most complicated.  Each of the 4" strips must have the gold pattern in  just the right place for the over-all pattern to be perfect.

Then we went outside to see the weavers at work.  This weaver is working on the simplest form - the single weave.  You can see the finished part is about 4" wide.  He is using the beater make sure his cloth is tightly woven.

He uses his feet to change the warp and weave so that the piece stays together.

Here is a sample of a finished strip double woven.

The threads leading up to the loom are tied down about 8 feet away.  We asked - what happens when it rains?  Ghana is in the monsoon season after all.  The thread is strong - they say.  It doesn't not hurt it at all to get drenched.

In Ghana weaving is a male occupation.  The men here are all students.  They supplement their studies with money earned from sales of their work.  This guy was really fast.

Another pattern emerges.  The piece that Jonas Aye gave me was made in this fashion.

I was all ready to try my hand at weaving - I did some when I was in my twenties.  But once I realized how low and tiny the seat was and the difficulty of getting into position - and having to take off my shoes and socks - I passed and let Nas do the honors.  She thought it was very difficult to coordinate the feet with the hands.

This guy is doing triple weaving.  There is a lot of hand weaving involved.

You can see how he has placed the different colors through just a small portion of the header threads. He then lays a solid thread all across to lock those pieces into place.

You can see the beater - that is the first upright form you see closest to his work.  This is used to push the threads very close together - it beats them together.

Then we were brought into the gift shop - where it was every man to himself.  They all had their own little areas to display their work.  Everyone wanted us to buy from them.  But we cannot buy from all.  This guy was the winner.  We also bought another smaller piece from the guy who played our tour guide instead of tipping him.