Two of Africa's best-known textile traditions, both from Ghana: kente, woven strip by strip on narrow looms, and adinkra, stamped by hand with symbols that carry proverbs. What they mean, where they are made, and how not to buy a fake.
Kente is woven on a narrow horizontal loom by weavers working the treadles with their feet and passing the shuttle by hand. The result is a long strip only a hand's width wide. Dozens of strips are then sewn together edge to edge to make a full cloth, worn by men wrapped like a toga over one shoulder, and by women as two or three pieces.
A full hand-woven cloth takes weeks or months of work, which is why real kente is expensive and why it is kept for the most important occasions: festivals, weddings, funerals, enstoolments and national celebrations. Two great traditions exist side by side, the Asante and the Ewe, each with its own story of origin and its own style.
Kente: the cloth that speaks in storiesOn ghana-net.com. Kente cloth: history and meaningOn myghana2027.com.Asante tradition tells of two men from Bonwire who learned to weave by watching a spider spin its web. Bonwire, about half an hour from Kumasi, is still the best-known kente village, where you can watch weavers at work and buy directly from them. Asante kente is bold and bright, with geometric blocks in gold, green, red and blue, and many patterns carry names and stories. Some patterns were historically reserved for the Asantehene and the royal court.
Bonwire, the kente weaving villageOn ghana-net.com. Kumasi, Ashanti RegionOn ghana-net.com.Kumasi and craft village tours: entrance fees are included in the tour price. Tips for your guide and driver are not included, but they are always welcome.
The Ewe of the Volta Region weave their own kente, and many Ewe hold that their tradition is at least as old as the Asante one. Ewe kente is often subtler, with more muted colours, finer detail and woven figures, from animals and people to everyday objects. Kpetoe, in the Agotime area near the Togo border, is the main weaving centre, and celebrates its cloth at the Agbamevo festival. Agbozume, further south, hosts one of the great textile markets of the region.
Kpetoe kente weaving villageOn hoinghana.com. The Agbamevo festivalOn hoinghana.com. Agbozume textile marketOn hoinghana.com. Volta Regional MuseumVolta kente in photographs.Volta Region tours: entrance fees are included in the tour price. Tips for your guide and driver are not included, but they are always welcome.
Weavers and elders explain colour meanings in different ways, but a broadly shared reading runs like this:
Ghana's own flag colours, red, gold and green, sit in this same tradition.
Adinkra cloth is printed by hand. Craftsmen carve symbols into pieces of calabash, dip them in a thick dark dye boiled from tree bark, and stamp them in rows onto cloth divided into squares. Each symbol stands for a proverb, a saying or an idea. Traditionally adinkra was worn at funerals and in mourning, which is why the darker cloths are the classic ones; today the symbols appear everywhere, from buildings and logos to jewellery and tattoos.
The village of Ntonso, near Kumasi, is the centre of adinkra printing, where you can watch the dye being made and try stamping your own cloth.
Adinkra: the language woven into clothOn ghana-net.com. Ntonso, the adinkra printing villageOn ghana-net.com.Much of the "kente" sold in markets, and almost all of it sold cheaply abroad, is not woven at all but printed on cotton, often imported from Asia. There is nothing wrong with buying printed cloth if you know what you are paying for. Just do not pay hand-woven prices for it.