Woman's Skirt (late 1800s–about 1906–12): Art, History and Details

Woman's Skirt (late 1800s–about 1906–12) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Mbuun men wove and embroidered wrap skirts like this for women to wear on special occasions. Gently color-shifted patterns (lubawa) along the central panels were achieved by “floating” wefts (selectively covering over vertical, or warp, threads with horizontal, or weft, threads). In contrast, various black-brown embroidered diamonds cover the borders. These are called lobubasa, motifs also seen on cicatrices (ornamental scars) that once beautified women’s bodies. Short tufts running horizontally and vertically across the textile were created by inserting extra fibers, then cutting and fluffing them with a knife. These add texture and hide the seams between woven panels.

Object facts

• Title: Woman's Skirt
• Date: late 1800s–about 1906–12
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mbuun-style weavers and embroiderers
• Type: Garment
• Technique: Raffia palm fiber (Raphia ruffia or R. vinifera) and dye
• Dimensions: Overall: 73.7 x 102.9 cm (29 x 40 1/2 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 2013.5

A detail from the museum

The diamond motifs on this skirt have symbolic and cosmological links to lizards (mbil), an animal associated with matrilineal (female descent) clans.

Collection credit

Alma Kroeger Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Picton, John, and John Mack. African Textiles. London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Publications, 1989.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.
• Petridis, Constantine. “2013 Acquisitions: African Art.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 54, no. 2 (March/April 2014): 22.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.