Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Giant checkerboard diamonds and grid lozenges, as bold as a chess club mural.

This Shoowa prestige panel is Kuba, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa, and dates to the 20th century. It is piled raffia. Cut-pile raffia of this kind is usually attributed to the Shoowa, a Kuba people of the Kasai region, and was traditionally made by women. Large diamond blocks filled with black and tan checkerboard squares alternate with open black grid diamonds. Smaller tan diamond lattices fill the corners. It is 20 inches across and 21 long.

Black squares have strong opinions here, and the grid lines agree.