35x30 in/89x76 cm

These enigmatic textiles are seldom found in early Western museum collections because they were tightly held by the Dida; it is said that a series of crop failures brought about their sale into the world market in the last quarter of the 20th Century to the elation of African textile connoisseurs. Scholars immediately recognized that these cloths represented a window on the earliest style of indigenous West African weaving, well predating the narrow-strip looms that weave cotton and silk, understood to be an outside Islamic influence of later centuries. This is one of the finest and most subtle of the celebrated Ogawa Collection of Tokyo, acquired some 12 years ago and never offered until now.

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