Cotton Cloth
date: label: Accession Date
content: 28 Feb 1867
label: Collection Date
content: 1849
name: label: Collector
content: Rev. Ralph R. Gurley
label: Donor Name
content: Rev. Ralph R. Gurley
notes: label: Notes
content: FROM CARD: "TIE-DYE "SUN-BURST" IN INDIGO."
label: Notes
content: According to curator, Mary Jo Arnoldi: "The description on the catalog card ("tie-dye sunburst in indigo") is in error. The textile is a cotton blanket made from 8 strips. It is woven with natural and indigo dyed threads with a pattern of indigo blue stripes alternating with indigo blue parallelograms against a natural colored cotton background. It was made by Fulani weavers (this identification is based on close stylistic affinities to similar cotton blankets documented in the field). This blanket was originally collected c. 1849. It was collected in near Cape Palmas, Liberia by the Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley, who was a member of the American Colonization Society. The cloth was lent to the Museum of African Art in 1986 for their inaugural exhibit on textiles ("West African Textile Traditions and the Birth of Royal Kente"). It was originally chosen from the collection by Dr. Rene Boser, who curated the exhibit. Dr. Boser (now deceased) was one of the world's leading experts on West African hand woven textiles. In 1985 I worked with Dr. Boser when she was choosing textiles for this exhibit. She chose this particular Fulani example because of the superb fineness of the weaving which signaled to her that it was not of recent manufacture, and was most probably from the 19th century."
label: Notes
content: Listed on page 61 in "The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California, 1915", in section "Arts of the African Tribes (Textiles)".
label: Record Last Modified
content: 20 Oct 2020
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Cape Palmas, interior of, Liberia, Africa
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Fulani
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 67A00010
label: USNM Number
content: E4500-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Cloth