Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Dark checkerboards stacked over a lattice, the whole thing near black.

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 cloths come from the Kuba kingdom in the Kasai region, where men traditionally wove the raffia ground and women embroidered it. The top half has a black and cream lattice of slanted squares, and the bottom half shifts to a finer checkerboard of small diamonds. The ground is very dark, with a visible horizontal seam between them and a deep brown border. It is 19.5 inches across and 28.25 long.

Dense, dark and very pleased with its own contrast.