Shweshwe is a type of dyed and printed cotton fabric used in traditional South-African clothing. Originally with indigo, it’s now made in variety of colours and designs, featuring intricate geometric patterns. It’s made in a intricate discharge process. First the fabric is dyed entirely, then passed through copper design rollers. The copper rollers emit an acid solution which removes the color with pinpoint accuracy to form the pattern. The use of picotage, tiny pin dots that create designs, texture and depth, is characteristic to shweshwe.
The characteristic fabric has been called the denim, or tartan, of South Africa. Shweshwe is also known as “german print” (sejeremane in Sotho, ujamani in Xhosa) after 19th century german and swiss settlers who imported the Blaudruck fabric.
Blaudruck (german: blueprint) is a resist-dye technique characterised by a white pattern on an indigo blue background, often featuring floral motives. Blaudruck is on the list of intangible cultural heritage in Germany. The technique came to Europe along with the indigo plant with travellers of the Dutch East India Company. The technique was commonly practised across Central Europe in the 18th and 19th century. Traditional skills and recipes are passed on within family businesses and from one generation to the next. In Germany there are only a few workshops left that produce Blaudruck.
Adinkra are visual symbols that represent concepts or aphorisms, used extensively in fabrics and pottery among the Ashantis in Ghana and Baoulés in Cote D’Ivoire. Adinkra cloth is made by block printing as well as screen printing. The present centre of traditional production of adinkra cloth is Ntɔnso, 20 km northwest of Kumasi.
Block printing is the process of printing patterns by means of engraved wooden blocks.
It is the earliest, simplest and slowest of all methods of textile printing. Block printing by hand is a slow process. It is, however, capable of yielding highly artistic results, some of which are unobtainable by any other method.
Kalamkari, which literally means “pen-worked,” is a multistep process for creating designs. The cloth is first stiffened by being steeped in astringents and buffalo milk and then dried in the sun. The red, black, brown, and violet portions of the designs are outlined with a mordant, and the cloth is placed in a bath of alizarin. The cloth is then covered with wax, except for the parts to be dyed blue, and placed in an indigo bath. Afterwards, the wax is scraped off and the areas to be yellow or pale green are painted by hand.
It is a type of hand-painted or block-printed cotton textile, produced in parts of India and Iran. Its name originates in the Persian ,قلمکار which is derived from the words qalam (pen) and kari (craftmanship), meaning drawing with a pen. Only natural dyes are used in kalamkari and it involves seventeen steps.
There are two distinctive styles of kalamkari art in India – the Srikalahasti style and the Machilipatnam style. The Srikalahasti style of kalamkari, wherein the “kalam” or pen is used for free hand drawing of the subject and filling in the colors, is entirely hand worked. This style flowered around temples and their patronage and so had an almost religious identity – scrolls, temple hangings, chariot banners and the like, depicted deities and scenes taken from the Hindu mythological classics.
Bògòlanfini or bogolan (Bambara: bɔgɔlanfini; “mud cloth”) is a handmade Malian cotton fabric traditionally dyed with fermented mud. It has an important place in traditional Malian culture and has, more recently, become a symbol of Malian cultural identity. The cloth is being exported worldwide for use in fashion, fine art and decoration.
Today, the center of bògòlanfini production, and the source of the highest quality cloth, is the town of San. Traditionally, bògòlanfini production, was done by men weaving the cloth and women dye it. On narrow looms, strips of cotton fabric about 15 cm wide are woven and stitched into cloths about 1 by 5 m long.
