KENTE
Kente (Akan: kente or nwetoma; Ewe: kete; Dagbani: Chinchini) refers to a Ghanaian textile, made of handwoven cloth, strips of silk and cotton. Historically the fabric was worn in a toga-like fashion by royalty among ethnic groups such as the Ashanti and Ewe. It is also worn by queens, princesses and women of Dagbon.
in the Ashanti region of Ghana, Kente cloth is a great status symbol, marking your wealth and, in the past, your office. Something to be worn on important occasions and by important people.
A typical Kente fabric is woven in narrow strips. Each strip contains a series of bands, designed in intricate, multicoloured, geometrical patterns, alternated by other bands of simple, linear designs in contrasting, co- ordinating colours for harmonious effect.
Each pattern is named after a historical event or a person, or is connected with a proverb.
the weaving process:
the design determines the colours of the yarns that he has to put on the bobbin and, subsequently, on the wool.The process, is to put the warp thread into the heddles and beater and work according to the design pattern.After putting the warp thread into the various heddles and beater, the whole thing is brought into a loom for the weaver to start to weave it.There are two sets of heddles. The first set is used in making patterns and the second set is used in being regular weaving, where no patterns are required. to make one strip is takes arounds eight hours of hard work.
the original Kente designs were black and white. The cotton used grown locally. The black and indigo colours were locally made using local available dyed colours. The weaver had no contact with the rest of the world, so he had no access to the variety of colours that we have today hence the colour choice, up until the development of the "Gold Coast" which also introduced not only colours but also silks.
With modernisation, there have been many changes In the past only black, red and golds were used, but nowadays more colours are available. colours may not always be exact but they are used in producing traditional designs in modern fashionable colour patterns, in order to make people attracted including metallic thread for a "party" look.
Adinkra
Adinkra is a printed fabric - hand-made and worn mainly for funerals, an important celebration in Ghana. Adinkra fabric is carefully printed in graphic symbols of geometric motifs, on a background of white, rust-brown, or black vegetable-dye fabric. Any one of the motifs, or any combination of them, could be arranged in narrative patterns to convey specific messages.
These messages may be expressed as a reflection on issues pertaining to beauty, morality or other higher values.
The black dye for the cloth is produced from kuntun kruni - the roots from the kuntu plant. To make it ,twelve buckets of water are used to make one barrel with twenty-five strips of the roots put into it and stew for 2days. when you put in the white cloth first it looks like brown, but by two weeks’ time it will change into black, leaving it to seep and be dyed for two weeks, leaving it in the sun. When it dries you bring it back, and wet it again, and dry it again, repeating this process six times. ‘Badie’, the hard bark of the tree found only in the Savannah areas is broken into pieces and soaked with water for twenty-four hours. The softened bark is pounded in a mortar and is used to produce the dye for stamping the symbols.Repeated boiling and filtering produces a concentrated solution.Out of forty-eight gallons only one gallon of the solution is produced.
The Adinkra stamps are carved from the wood CU stamps being of a gourd or calabash, by a professional carved designer and carver, such as, Joseph Kofi S/I Nsiah.
Kente is associated with important occasions, but it is linked especially with high social office and is more of a wealthy person’s status symbol, whereas Adinkra is associated with funerals and thus important but solemn occasions in the lives of everyone.
Kente is designed to be felt (‘beautiful’, like silk) as well as for appearance, it uses imported rayons. Adinkra is designed to be looked at and requires local supplies for the dyes.
Ways of making kente and adinkra have shifted and continue to shift. kente weavers first used cotton and vegetable dyes, then bought silks from European traders, before beginning to use rayon. The most recent introduction is the use of lurex to achieve ‘glitter’. Vegetable dyes are used for adinkra, black and white or coloured, some cloths thave black-stamped designs on red and blue grounds
Kente is very time consuming to produce, with one strip of the best cloth taking at least a day to make with grades of skill (only 10% of workmen are able and willing to make some difficult designs due to time and skill needed. under the control of 1 man, taking even longer before as thread used to be homespun)
Adinkra takes several weeks to make and involves the input of dyer, stamp carver, and printer in a collaborative process.
With kente the decisions and exact calculations take place right at the start, before the weaving begins. The design and colour choices must be thought out before warping up the loom, and the plan must then be steadily and accurately followed through with no changes.
Adinkra depends on a lengthy dyeing process (of six dippings) to obtain the depth and evenness of hue. It requires precision, speed, and decisiveness at the printing stage. Design activity is concentrated towards the end of the making process.
no matter which design buyer is acquiring skilful design and execution.
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