Wrapper

Wrapped around the waist, handwoven and indigo-dyed textiles serve as prestige items purchased by and gifted to women living along the upper reaches of the Volta River. While simpler versions might be worn as part of daily attire, women don finer examples embellished with linear and geometric patterning during important occasions, including births, marriages, harvest celebrations, and initiation ceremonies. Such highly valued garments are carefully stored when not in use. They can be passed down from mother to daughter over several generations, accumulating as important treasuries linking contemporary women with their maternal forebears.

This midcentury example features six warp-face bands seven inches in width, made from handspun and handwoven cotton. To weave each of these bands, the warp was set up with thirteen alternating stripes of white and indigo-dyed yarns and woven with a white weft. Counting across the cut-and-stitched bands reveals that their corresponding stripes contain the same number of warp yarns, suggesting that the wrapper was created from a single warp length. This probability is most clearly evidenced by comparing the two terminal indigo stripes along the weft selvages of each band—one has approximately half the number of warps as the other. After weaving, the striped cloth was rolled in the traditional manner and sold or passed on to other specialists for further elaboration.