Kuba Cloth
Artist Unknown
Raffia (palm fiber) cloth, 29.125 x 25.375 inches
Located on the 4th floor, north hallway
Kuba textiles, made of woven palm/raffia fiber, are unique in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), for their elaborate design and surface decoration. Most kuba cloths are rectangular or square and are enhanced by strong geometric designs, often conducted in linear embroidery and hand-stitching. You may notice the cloth in the O’Neill School is not perfectly rectangular–signifying the handmade nature of the item.
Regarding kuba production, men are responsible for cultivating raffia palm and weaving the initial cloth. Women, then, are often responsible for transforming the cloth into various textiles, such as ceremonial skirts, tribute cloths, headdresses, and basketry. Each kuba cloth takes 2-3 hours to create, although certain skilled weavers can create 10-15 cloths in a single day.
The more ceremonious or prestigious kubas are dyed with twool, a deep red substance obtained from the heartwood of tropical trees pterocarpus soyauxii and baphia pubescens. This twool is also believed by regional cultures to have protective and magical properties.
Kuba cloths demonstrate a taste for interrupting the “expected line” in textiles–they are instead created and woven through juxtapositions of sharply differing patterns, having some similarity to both mathematics and music.
With the closing off of this post, I also want to reflect on the absence of certain provenance details in the case of this exact kuba cloth in the O’Neill School. There’s much information about the history, meaning, creation, and generous gift of this cloth, but we have no information about the cloth’s artist. Knowing the exact person that created an art item, the history attached to the item, the exact journey it took to get where it’s at currently for viewing (the 4th floor northside atrium) all contribute to a general understanding and appreciation of a piece. While we can still absolutely appreciate the piece, we should also be aware of all the gaps of information we might have surrounding it (and that’s a big part of why the O’Neill School Art Committee is undertaking this blog project).
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