Bark cloth dress and sash
date: label: Accession Date
content: 17 Feb 2017
name: label: Collector
content: Nulu Naluyombya
label: Donor Name
content: Nulu Naluyombya
notes: label: Notes
content: Dress and sash, made from dark brown bark cloth. Dress has square neck bodice with puff elbow length sleeves. The dress is decorated with both shells and wooden beads. The bodice is closed with two clear plastic and gold thread buttons. Sash has commercially made gold fringe and wooden beads. Note from curator Mary Jo Arnoldi: "This dress was made for Nulu Naluyombya, a fellow in the Mandela Washington Fellowship program for Young African Leaders. As a part of her fellowship she interned with the Office Sponsored Projects at the Smithsonian Institution under Karen Otiji. She had the barkcloth dress made in Uganda and she wore this dress for her presentation on girls education in Africa to First Lady Michelle Obama in 2014. The Baganda name for the dress is busuti. It is made from the inner bark of the mutuba tree (Ficus natalensis) which is beaten with wooden mallets to form the cloth... Barkcloth is made by male craftsmen and the dress itself was made for Nulu Naluyombya by her sister."
label: Notes
content: Notes from the donor, Ms. Naluyombya: "The dress is a “busuti”, which is the female traditional wear in Uganda's Buganda Kingdom, and is made out of bark cloth. Bark cloth is a significant and sacred cloth in the Buganda Kingdom where I come from in Southern Uganda. It was made for me by my sister after I was selected for the highly competitive Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF) for President Obama's Young African Leaders Initiative in Summer 2014. When I arrived in Washington, DC to begin my fellowship, I was selected to be a part of First Lady Michelle Obama's Young African Leadership Initiative consultative group on girls' education in Africa... I wore this bark cloth dress to make [a] presentation to Mrs. Obama... Bark-cloth making is an ancient craft of the Baganda people who live in the Buganda kingdom in southern Uganda. Traditionally, craftsmen of the Ngonge clan, headed by Kaboggoza, the hereditary chief craftsman have been manufacturing bark cloth for the Baganda Royal family and the rest of the community... The making of barkcloth has been a part of Ugandan culture for centuries. It is a sacred fabric which defines the spirit of the Buganda kingdom. Barkcloth remains a ceremonial dress code for royalty, chiefs, and heirs during coronations and funerals. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has named it among the world's collective heritage and is Uganda's sole representative on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists..."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 28 Apr 2020
label: Specimen Count
content: 2
place: label: Place
content: Uganda, Africa
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Baganda
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2076807
label: USNM Number
content: E434860-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Dress / Sash
physicalDescription: label: Length - Sash
content: 230 cm