The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Special Exhibitions: The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End

The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End

		Prestige Gown Cameroon, Grassfields region, 19th–20th century Cotton, wool; 86 1/4 x 45 in. (219.1 x 114.3 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Dr. and Mrs. Sidney Clyman Gift and Rogers Fund, 1987 (1987.163)

This ample flowing garment is composed of indigo-dyed cloth that has been embroidered with animal and abstract motifs using white cotton thread in chain stitches. The visual effect of the white on indigo and the style of the designs appear to have been adapted from Wukari indigo resist-dye textiles. Known throughout Cameroon's Grassfields region as ndop, these textiles are of great ritual importance and associated with royal power, elite status, and funerary rites. Historically, regional leaders have controlled their use, integrating them into their dress and distributing them to deserving subjects. Immense ndop cloths typically were unfurled as backdrops against which public ceremonial gatherings were enacted. In an allusion to that tradition, two of the major motifs on this gown are the leopard, an insignia of chiefly power, depicted on either sleeve and the abstract interlocking filaments that denote a hunting net emanating from the center section of the garment. In the region of the Bamenda plateau it was also common to accentuate the neckline of such garments with embroidery.