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Pitt Rivers Museum

1942.13.1580

Native cotton cloth, natural whitish colour, the front with elaborate geometrical design in red, blue and yellow.

On display


1942.13.1580

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

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Collection type
Object
Description
Native cotton cloth, natural whitish colour, the front with elaborate geometrical design in red, blue and yellow.
Geographical reference
Southern Nigeria Ijebu / Bamenda District
Cultural groups
Ijebu Yoruba
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1935
Date collected
1930-1935
Acquisition information
Donated: 1942
Materials and processes
Material Cotton Seed Fibre Textile Plant, Material Pigment, Process Woven, Process Dyed, Process Stitched
Dimensions
Width: max 800 mm, Length: max 2220 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1942.13.1580 Other numbers: 585
Research and responses

Identified (10 6 1997) by Lisa Aronson (Associate Professor of Art History at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York) as an Ijebu Yoruba title cloth (aso olona). (See, for example, 'Ijebu Yoruba Aso Olona: A Contextual and Historical Overview', by Lisa Aronson, in African Arts, Vol. XXV, no. 3 (July 1992), pp. 52-63, 101-2; which illustrates a number of examples and provides diagrams of some of the motifs on the PRM example.) Aronson did not think it surprising that an Ijebu Yoruba cloth should have been obtained by Jeffreys among the Bamenda. Trade in such materials was common by the 1930s. [JC 11 9 1997]

Lisa Aronson confirmed the above details in an e-mail dated 3 November 1997. She also emphasized that the float decoration is not embroidered (as noted in accession book; see above) but woven (printout of e-mail in RDF). [JC 11 11 1997]

Search terms: Textile, Trade