Currently not on view
Man's wrapper (kente),
20th century
Akan artist
1998-698
Asante Kente cloths are composed by stitching together strips of woven fabric that alternate warp- and weft-faced weave, resulting in a checkered effect. Once a royal textile whose use was carefully restricted, kente is now the national cloth of Ghana and an international symbol of pan-Africanism. Kente is draped around the body without fasteners, requiring constant readjustment or “dancing” of the cloth, allowing its patterns to be seen in constant movement. Both whole cloths and smaller patterns are named for proverbs, objects, and people. Exhibiting the skill of the weaver, named weft-faced patterns are concentrated at the cloth’s ends. This large, 24-strip men’s wrapper includes nnwötoa (“snail’s bottom”) in red and yellow.
Information
Title
Man's wrapper (kente)
Dates
20th century
Maker
Akan artist
Medium
Cotton, rayon, and dye
Dimensions
320.3 cm x 204.6 cm (126 1/8 x 80 9/16 in.)
Credit Line
Bequest of John B. Elliott, Class of 1951
Object Number
1998-698
Place Made
Africa, Ghana
Materials
Techniques
Subject
John B. Elliott, New York, NY; Princeton University Art Museum, 1998
- "Selected checklist of objects in the collection of African art," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 58, no. 1/2 (1999): p. 77–83., p. 77
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"The checklist of the John B. Elliott Bequest," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 61 (2002): p. 49-99.
, p. 73 - Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 58-59 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 58
