Unrecorded artist, Shoowa Peoples

Notes

Classic “Kasaai Velvet” with harmonious colour arrangements and pattern combinations. While the motifs on plush cloth consist only of lozenges, rectangles, and triangles, the mathematician, Donald Crowe, established that the Kuba have exhausted 12 of the 17 possibilities of covering a surface with a self-repeating pattern.

However, “it is not the simple, more or less random, covering of surfaces with geometric patterns that distinguishes Kuba cloths, particularly the plush cloth. Instead, it is the unique relationship between the designs and the geometrical forms. This relationship is achieved through pattern compositions that appear to be left to chance but consistently fascinate."¹

^1. Mack, John, and John Picton. African Textiles. London: British Museum Publications Ltd, 1979

Provenance

Michael Heuermann Collection.