Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Tiny diamonds in two minds, divided by a seam running down the upper middle.

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. Small tan and black diamonds and triangles fill the cloth in a dense, fine pattern. The upper half is split by a vertical seam into two slightly different fields. The ground is muted tan, and the edges are narrow. It measures 22 inches wide and 24 long.

Plenty of small decisions, and none of them quite agree.