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WOVEN HISTORY: RAFFIA CLOTH IN THE KONGO By CARLEE S. FORBES A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2013 1 © 2013 Carlee S. Forbes 2 To my family and teachers who have shown me the joy of learning 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis project grew out of the opportunity that I have had for the past year to work on a collaborative project, entitled Kongo Across the Waters, between the Harn Museum and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to these two institutions, their staff, and especially to our curators for allowing me to take part in this project and participate in this research process. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 6 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 9 Art in the Kongo Kingdom ....................................................................................... 10 Organization ........................................................................................................... 19 2 STUDYING KONGO ART ....................................................................................... 22 Perceptions of Kongo Art ........................................................................................ 22 Three Case Studies ................................................................................................ 28 3 PRESTIGE AND COSMOLOGIES: A KONGO TEXTILE COMPARISON .............. 39 Production and Embellishment Processes .............................................................. 41 Role of Raffia Textiles in Kongo society.................................................................. 46 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 56 4 CHANGING TRADE PATTERNS AND MAT DESIGN ............................................ 69 Roles of Raffia Textiles: the Decline of Velvet Textiles ........................................... 70 Roles of Raffia Textiles: Mats as Status Symbols and Spiritual markers ................ 74 The Introduction of Figurative Motifs ....................................................................... 78 5 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 88 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................... 91 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ............................................................................................ 98 5 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 1-1 Images of mats in Kongo life from Dapper (1668) .............................................. 21 2-1 Burning of Fetishes, Theodore and Israel DeBry, 1598, engraving .................... 38 3-1 Embroidery cloth with geometric design ............................................................. 57 3-2 Pile technique: detail of mpu............................................................................... 57 3-3 Raffia mat ........................................................................................................... 58 3-4 Stepped pattern .................................................................................................. 58 3-5 Warp and weft manipulation. .............................................................................. 59 3-6 Kongo Mats with figurative imagery . .................................................................. 61 3-7 Geometric mat .................................................................................................... 61 3-8 Figurative mats ................................................................................................... 62 3-9 Female with child. ............................................................................................... 62 3-10 Women’s scarification ......................................................................................... 63 3-11 Ivory horn............................................................................................................ 63 3-12 Ivory scepter ....................................................................................................... 64 3-13 Mpu. ................................................................................................................... 64 3-14 Mats with funerary scenes .................................................................................. 65 3-15 Mat with funerary scene. .................................................................................... 65 3-16 Niombo mummy bundle, photograph. ................................................................. 66 3-17 Mat details: bottles .............................................................................................. 66 3-18 Mat details: human figures ................................................................................. 67 3-19 Images of leopard objects in Kongo art. ............................................................. 68 4-1 Images of mats in Kongo life. Cavazzi, “Queen Nzinga, Kingdom of Kongo, Meeting with the Portuguese,” 1690. .................................................................. 85 6 4-2 Images of mats in Kongo life. Dennett, “Maloango Pongo Falls Sick (from a sketch by the author),” 1887 ............................................................................... 85 4-3 Images of mats in Kongo Life. Dybowski, “Le malade devra en guérir...(D'après un croquis.),” 1893 ................................................................... 86 4-4 Early mummy bundle practice (ca 1787) ............................................................ 86 4-5 1912 Yombe Grave with raffia mat at European textile. ..................................... 87 4.6 Ntadi figure. ........................................................................................................ 87 4-7 Wooden grave sculpture ..................................................................................... 87 7 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts WOVEN HISTORY: RAFFIA CLOTH IN THE KONGO By Carlee S. Forbes May 2013 Chair: Victoria L. Rovine Major: Art History This thesis compares two types of raffia textiles from the former Kongo Kingdom region: sixteenth-century raffia textiles that feature intricate geometric motifs and nineteenth-century mats of the same medium that use both figurative and geometric designs. Ms. Forbes brings forth a rarely discussed collection of mats from the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium that she discovered during her research for the upcoming Kongo Across the Waters exhibition at the Harn Museum of Art. She questions the introduction of figuration on the mats and proposes a combination of factors that may have contributed to this shift. These factors include: the role of raffia textiles as markers of status, the effects of the introduction of European imported cloth, the role of raffia mats in funerals, and the opportunities for artistic innovation. 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION …in this kingdom of the Congo they produce cloths from palm fibers with velvet like decoration, of such beauty that better ones are not made in Italy. In no other part of Guinea is there a country where they are able to weave these clothes as in this kingdom of Congo. — Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis (1505-8)1 Early European encounters with the Kingdom of the Kongo, as described in this quotation from a Portuguese explorer, show a great admiration for the refined Kongolese textiles. These fine textiles are currently held in numerous European private and museum collections. Another group of Kongo raffia products, mats, are much less prevalent in museum collections, but they are no less impressive. These mats date from the early 20th century and into the present. The mats feature geometric patterns characteristic of many Kongo arts in addition to incorporating figurative designs. These mats are rarely discussed in scholarship, overlooked for their older, finer counterparts. Examining the stylistic changes that occurred between the production of the early velvet textiles and these early 20th century mats reveals the significance of these mats and became the basis of this project. A comparison between the earliest Kongo textiles held in museums and the collection of Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) mats forms the core of this study. The raffia used to create both types of objects offers a basis for comparison. The materials may be similar, but the two types of objects differ in their production techniques and iconography. The velvet textiles are made of fine fibers that permit 1 From Duarte Pacheco Pereira. Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis 1505-1508. Translated and Quoted in African Art and Artefacts by Ezio Bassani, 279. 9 weavers to create very detailed and intricate geometric patterns.2 The mats are woven of larger raffia strips and feature a mixture of geometric