Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Dark diamonds scattered across a golden field like seeds thrown for a harvest.

This Shoowa prestige panel is Kuba, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa, and dates to the 20th century. It is piled raffia. Shoowa weavers are known for cut-pile raffia cloth, embroidered and clipped to a velvet-like surface, and such panels were generally valued as prestige goods. Here a natural raffia ground is worked with interlocking lines, small dark diamonds and stepped lattice patterns. The design shifts across the panel in several blocks, each slightly different from the last. It is 23.5 inches wide and 68.5 long.

Everyone working on it had their own idea, and every one of them was right.