Object Description
Donor's Notes (Transcribed by Curator, Joachim Homann):
-Received from Professor Nathaniel Daniel Oyerinde, trained in the Baptist College, an elected chief. His family remained Christian in spite of political turmoil. In gratitude for reorganizing the library in Ogbomoso, on the occasion of the opening.
-In the early years of the C20th the tradition of aso oke weaving centred around three prestige cloths: etu; sanyan; and alaari; although in reality a far wider range of designs were woven in the past. These three cloths are still associated with a deep sense of respect for tradition and a consciousness of identity as Yoruba, although they have long since been supplanted by more recent fashions. Etu is a deep blue, almost black, indigo dyed cloth, so dark that a costly dyeing process involving many many immersions in fresh pots of indigo was needed, offset by very thin warp and weft stripes, often only a single thread in width, of lighter blue. The name etu means guinea fowl, and the cloth is likened to the bird's speckled plumage. A verse from an Ifa divination text describes etu as the father of all cloths. Sanyan is woven from the beige silk obtained locally from the cocoons of the Anaphe moth, forming a rather uneven pale brown cloth. Alaari is the Yoruba name for cloth woven using magenta waste silk that until the early decades of this century was imported across the Sahara from southern Europe via Tripoli. Cloths woven entirely with this silk were extremely rare and it was more usual to weave it as stripes or weft float decorations into an indigo dyed cloth.