Mudcloth (bogolan fini)
date: label: Accession Date
content: 25 Mar 2005
label: Collection Date
content: 2003
name: label: Collector
content: Dr. Mary Jo Arnoldi
label: Donor Name
content: Dr. Mary Jo Arnoldi
notes: label: Notes
content: Hand painted mudcloth, with image of ciwara headdress. Made of 9 long cloth strips, sewn together at the selvages. The cloth is a coarse plain weave, with single-ply Z-spun handspun cotton yarn. The background is light brown. Dark brown handpainted / stenciled geometric patterns, including diamonds, and a repeated ciawara headdress motif, cover the whole cloth. Unhemmed.
label: Notes
content: Mary Jo Arnoldi, Curator of African Ethnology (and collector of this cloth), notes that in older bogolanfini (mudcloth) the image is created in the negative space left after the mud dye is applied. However, on this cloth, the image of the ciwara is stenciled on, with the mud dye creating the image rather than the negative space. Also, mud cloth designs were traditionally geometric. Therefore both the technique and the inclusion of a representational image are departures from those traditions. The choice to use a ciwara headdress as the motif is also interesting. The ciwara is a men's masquerade headdress used among the Bamana peoples, but since independence in 1960, it has also been used in various official Malian logos. It has become a symbol of Malian national identity, rather than Bamana ethnic identity. Mud cloth itself is a symbol of national identity as well. It has undergone a renaissance in Mali in the late 20th century, where they are worn by fashionable young urbanites as a fashion statement about Malian identity in a global world.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 13 Nov 2015
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Bamako, Mali, Africa
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Malian
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2034104
label: USNM Number
content: E431578-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Cloth
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 205 cm
label: Width - Object
content: 127 cm