Ewe Strip-Woven Cloth

Green on green, until the ends, where someone allowed a little orange.

This strip-woven cloth is Ewe, from Ghana in West Africa, and dates to the 20th century. It is cotton. Among the Ewe, men traditionally did the weaving, on narrow looms that turned out long strips later cut and joined into a single large wrapper for wearing on important days. Dark and olive greens form a checkerboard across the field, broken by thin yellow, red and white lines. Columns of stepped orange and white shapes run along both ends. One hundred twenty-seven inches by seventy-eight.

Restraint, mostly. The orange did not get the memo.