Late 20th Century Vintage African Ndop Textile

This cloth is made out of cotton dyed with indigo pigment using the resist-dye technique. The design overstretched with raffia. Paul Gebauer wrote an interesting description of the technique used in the fabrication of such textiles: ” The local handspun cotton was woven into narrow strips, each about two inches wide, and then sewn together, edge to edge, to form the cloth” Guided by a rough outline, the cloth was stitched together tightly with dye-resistant raffia fiber. The stitched fabric was then dyed in indigo.”