Textile Ascendancies: Aesthetics, Production, and Trade in Northern Nigeria

Fig. 0.1. Etching of Kano, seen from Dala Hill, 1850, from Heinrich Barth (Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, vol. 1, New York: Harper Brothers, 1857, p. 500.)

Fig. 1.1. Hausa woman weaving on vertical single-heddle loom in Zaria City, January 1995. (Photograph by E. P. Renne.)

Fig 2.1. Young woman wearing cotton cloth print with peacock (mai ɗawisu) pattern, Zaria City. (Photograph of photograph by E. P. Renne.)

Fig. 3.1. Malam Iliyasu Muhammad, weaving on wide-width loom (masaƙin mudukare), Sabon Garin Ƙayyu, November 11, 2017. (Photograph by AbdurRahman S. Maiwada.)

Fig. 4.1. Workers at the Nortex (Nig) Limited mill in Kaduna, overseeing spindles producing yarn, November 14, 1962. (Photograph by Bello, courtesy of the Kaduna State Ministry of Information.)

Fig. 5.1. Production of jersey materials and custom printed T-shirts at the Adhama Textiles Garment Industry Ltd. mill, Bompai Industrial Area, Kano, January 24, 2017. (Photograph by E. P. Renne.)

Fig. 6.1. Women’s dress top and wrapper, made with textile materials imported from China, with imitation of embroidery along the sleeve edges, November 2017, Kano. (Photograph by Hannatu Hassan.)

Fig. 7.1. Stencil-printed cotton textile, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 2018. (Courtesy of the Dept. of Industrial Design Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.)

Fig. 8.1. ABC cotton print textile referred to as Leaves, with the phrase “Guaranteed English Wax” printed on the margin. This cloth is owned by Hajiya Amina, Tudun Wada, Kaduna. (Photograph by E. P. Renne, November 24, 2017.)

Studio family photograph from Kaduna depicting Hajiya Amina and her children wearing fashionable cotton print textiles with different designs, Kaduna, 1970 (photograph of photograph taken by E. Renne).

Court official, Kano, wearing glossy ɗan Kura blue-black turban (Courtesy of the Duckworth Collection, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University).

Young woman modelling a style of Fulani woman’s dress made of handwoven mudukare cloth, used in a photo studio in Zaria, 2006 (photograph by Salihu Maiwada).

Bunu Yoruba woman weaving vertical single-heddle loom in Agbede-Apaa-Bunu, Bunu District, Kogi State, November 1987 (photograph by E.P. Renne).

Handwoven cloth made with handspun, indigo-dyed thread. This two panels of this cloth, which was woven on a vertical, single-heddle loom by a Bunu women, has several stripes, with very subtle shades of blue-black warp thread and two very narrow white warp stripes at each panel edge. This cloth was collected in 1988 in Akutupa-Kiri, in the northern part of Bunu District, which borders on the Niger River near Egga. Purchased in Akutupa-Kiri, Bunu District, Kogi State, 1988 (photographed by E. Renne).

Oliphant trade mark, horseman the translation of the Hausa word “Maidoki” appearing on the Mark is “Horseman”. The transliteration of the Arabic Characters appearing on the Mark is “G.B. OLLIVANT LIMITED” (Official Gazette No. 31, Vol. 43, 3 May 1956).

Studio photograph of women wearing cotton print wrappers with mai tabarma (mat) pattern, Zaria City, 1970 (photograph of photograph, owned by Alhaji Yusuf Abdullahi).

Cloth sample collected in Zaria by Salihu Maiwada from textiles marketed during the 1980s in the area. (Zaria, courtesy of Salihu Maiwada, photograph of photograph by E.P. Renne.)

Alhaji Usman Ƙayyu is the head weaver of Sabon Garin Ƙayyu village, showing the different types of handwoven cloth which he has woven. He is holding an ilajo cloth, while a mudukare cloth is draped over his left shoulder and a saƙi cloth is on his right, Sabon Garin Ƙayyu, 11 November, 2017 (photograph by AbdurRahman S. Maiwada).

Weavers in Gidan Gabas, near Minjibir, using mudukare looms to produce warp-striped, wide-width textiles in patterns associated with older Hausa handwoven textiles. Both older and younger men are involved in handweaving in this area, 11 February 2018, Gidan Gabas (photograph by Ashiru Abdullahi).

Students at the Maude International School graduation exercises presenting a Fulani-style dance skit wearing mudukare style cloth made with industrially woven cloth, 18 November 2017, Zaria (photograph by E. Renne).