Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Black as night, with cream hooks that step across in diagonal runs.

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. Cream angular hooks and stepped lines run diagonally across a very dark ground, in two stacked sections divided by a seam. The black dominates, with a narrow brown border and a medium scale to the pattern. It measures 19.5 inches wide and 40.25 long.

Midnight, with a few cream footprints crossing it.