Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Black meanders and hooked diamonds, split into banded sections of different moods.

This Shoowa prestige panel is Kuba, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa, and dates to the 20th century. It is piled raffia. Kuba textiles were woven and embroidered to be worn, gifted and buried with the dead, long before collectors hung them on walls. Dark, high-contrast black and cream, arranged in horizontal bands. Hooked lozenges and stepped meanders fill the top and bottom, with a narrow busy band of small zigzags across the middle seam, so three distinct sections meet in one cloth. The panel is 19 inches wide by 23 long.

Three patterns in one cloth and none of them backing down.