Luxury Cloth
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.Twelve individually woven panels were stitched together along with a fringe added to the perimeter in order to create what ranks among the most monumental cloths in the extant corpus of early Kongo textiles. According to descriptions of the Loango court, members of a nobleman’s entourage spread such large textiles on the ground for him to sit upon when gathered with others before the king. The prosperous Ulm merchant Christoph Weickmann (1617–1681) assembled a collection of some 122 works of art and natural specimens that he obtained through exchange networks of various Danish, Dutch, German, and Swedish trading companies. This impressive textile is one of three among these identified as “Angolan” that were likely produced in the Lower Congo River region.
Artwork Details
- Title: Luxury Cloth
- Date: 16th–17th century, inventoried 1659
- Geography: Democratic Republic of the Congo; Republic of the Congo; Angola
- Culture: Kongo peoples; Kongo Kingdom
- Medium: Raffia
- Dimensions: L. 75 9/16 in. (192 cm), H. 59 7/16 in (151 cm)
[excluding 5 1/2 in (14 cm) perimenter fringe ] - Classification: Textiles-Woven
- Credit Line: Kunst- und Wunderkammer des Christoph Weickmann, Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany
- Curatorial Department: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing