Kente Prestige Cloth
Not on view
Among the numerous fabrics that serve as body wraps throughout west Africa, perhaps the most striking is kente cloth, associated with the Asante of Ghana. It is made from narrow strips of cloth sewn together. Most kente cloths are named according to their warp pattern, though some are named after people (usually rulers), trees, plants, birds and animals. Kente was made famous by the late president Nkrumah of Ghana. As Venice Lamb comments in West African Weaving (1975), "Under the influence of the late President of Ghana, kente became something more than purely Ghanaian and almost the uniform of pan-Africanism."
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