Dida, Women’s Prestige Cloths, Before 1920, Tie-dyed and Dye Resist Shaped Raffia with Natural Dyes, Museum purchase, The Class of 1947 Acquisition Fund 2016.158-.160

The Davis Museum recently acquired three raffia prestige cloths from the Dida culture of Cote d’Ivoire. Used as loincloths or skirts on special occasions, textiles like these were precious symbols of elite status until the mid-twentieth century. Since then, similar works have continued to be made and used, but with much less frequency. Garments worn only by those of the highest classes, they demonstrate mastery of shared techniques and experimentation in design.  In order to make these textiles, women first created very fine, soft raffia thread by splitting fibers from large, rough raffia leaves. They then wove the textile without a loom. The warps and wefts of these textiles are not perpendicular, but rather spiral around the cylindrically shaped cloths. These three examples have unusual openwork techniques, including very fine plaiting. The weavers then took the cloth to specialist artisans who used plant and mineral-based dyes to create intricate motifs through resist-dye techniques.