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Vlisco
The Vlisco Group designs, produces and distributes fashion fabrics, especially of the African wax print style, for the West and Central African market and African consumers in global metropolitan cities. Founded in Helmond, The Netherlands, in 1846, the Vlisco Group and their fabrics have grown into an essential part of African culture, receiving widespread attention from the art, design and fashion worlds. Vlisco Group's brand portfolio consists of four brands: Vlisco, Woodin, Uniwax and GTP. The company's head office, as well as the design and production facilities for the Vlisco brand, are located in Helmond. For the other brands these facilities are based in Ghana and Ivory Coast. The Vlisco Group has eight sales offices in numerous African countries and around 2,700 employees (900 in The Netherlands and 1,800 in Africa). History Vlisco Group was founded in 1846, when Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen bought an existing textile printing factory and named it P. Fentener van Vl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Wax Prints
African wax prints, Dutch wax prints or Ankara, are omnipresent and common materials for clothing in West Africa and Central Africa. They were introduced to West and Central Africans by Dutch merchants during the 19th century, who took inspiration from native Indonesian technique and Akwete cloth designs. They began to adapt their designs and colours to suit the tastes of the African market. They are industrially produced colourful cotton cloths with batik-inspired printing. One feature of these materials is the lack of difference in the colour intensity of the front and back sides. The wax fabric can be sorted into categories of quality due to the processes of manufacturing. Normally, the fabrics are sold in lengths of as "full piece" or as "half piece". The colours comply with local preferences of the customers. Typically, clothing for celebrations is made from this fabric. Wax prints are a type of nonverbal communication among African women, and thereby carry their messa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helmond
Helmond (; called ''Héllemond'' in the local dialect) is a city and municipality in the Metropoolregio Eindhoven of the province of North Brabant in the Southern Netherlands. Helmond is home to several textile and metal companies. The Vlisco factory is located next to the Zuid-Willemsvaart canal, which runs through the city. The spoken language is Helmonds (an East Brabantian dialect). History Etymology and Coat of Arms Helmond's coat of arms, first appearing in 1241, displays a helmet, and is a canting arms for the city's name, as ''helm'' means helmet in Dutch. However, the actual etymology of Helmond's name is probably derived from the combination of ''Hel'', which means "low-lying" (from Proto-Germanic ''*haljæ'' / ''Hel''), and ''Mond'', which referred to higher ground or a secure place. The helmet on the coat of arms originally was depicted as a medieval great helm, however, the design eventually came to depict a jousting helmet. The oak sprigs symbolize freedom, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare (born 9 August 1962), is a British-Nigerian artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured Ankara fabric he uses. Because he has a physical disability that paralyses one side of his body, Shonibare uses assistants to make works under his direction. Life and career Yinka Shonibare was born in London, England, on 9 August 1962, the son of Olatunji Shonibare and Laide Shonibare. When he was three years old, his family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where his father practised law. When he was 17 years old, Shonibare returned to Britain to do his A-levels at Redrice School. At the age of 18, he contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, which resulted in a long-term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed. Shonibare went on to study Fine Art first at Byam Shaw School of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kente
Kente ( ak, kente or ''nwetoma''; ee, kete; Dagbani: Chinchini) refers to a Ghanaian textile, made of handwoven cloth, strips of silk and cotton. Historically the fabric was worn in a toga-like fashion by royalty among ethnic groups such as the Ashanti and Ewe. It is also worn by queens, princesses and women of Dagbon. In modern day Ghana, the wearing of kente cloth has become widespread to commemorate special occasions, with highly sought-after kente brands led by master weavers. Due to the popularity of kente cloth patterns, kente print, which is a mass-produced version, is popular throughout the West. Globally, the print is used in the design of academic stoles in graduation ceremonies. Etymology Kente comes from the word ''kenten'', which means "basket" in the Asante dialect of the Akan language, referencing its basket-like pattern. In Ghana, the Akan ethnic group also refers to kente as ''nwentoma'', meaning "woven cloth". Ashanti folklore includes a story where weav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan (; 8 April 193818 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organisation founded by Nelson Mandela. Annan studied economics at Macalester College, international relations at the Graduate Institute Geneva, and management at MIT. Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organization's Geneva office. He went on to work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including serving as the Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996. He was appointed secretary-general on 13 December 1996 by the Security Council, and later confirmed by the General Assembly, making him the first office holder to be elected from the UN staff itself. He was re-elected for a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fashion
Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fashion industry as that which is ''trending''. Everything that is considered ''fashion'' is available and popularized by the fashion system (industry and media). Given the rise in mass production of commodities and clothing at lower prices and global reach, sustainability has become an urgent issue among politicians, brands, and consumers. Definitions The French word , meaning "fashion", dates as far back as 1482, while the English word denoting something "in style" dates only to the 16th century. Other words exist related to concepts of style and appeal that precede ''mode''. In the 12th and 13th century Old French the concept of elegance begins to appear in the context of aristocratic preferences to enhance beauty and display refinement, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adire (textile Art)
Adire (Yoruba: tie and dye) textile is the indigo- dyed cloth made in southwestern Nigeria by Yoruba women, using a variety of resist-dyeing techniques.It is a material designed with wax resist methods which will produce patterned designs in dazzling arrays of tints and hues. It is common among the egba people of Ogun state. History The earliest pieces of this type were probably simple tied designs on cotton cloth handspun and woven locally (rather like those still produced in Mali), but in the early decades of the 20th century new access to large quantities of imported shirting material via the spread of European textile merchants in Abeokuta and other Yoruba towns caused a boom in these women's entrepreneurial and artistic efforts, making adire a major local craft in Abeokuta and Ibadan, attracting buyers from all over West Africa. Abeokuta is considered to be the capital of adire making in Nigeria, however some suggest that the large cities of Ibadan and Osogbo (Yorubaland) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Art
The art of Europe, or Western art, encompasses the history of art, history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock art, rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period between the Paleolithic and the Iron Age. Written histories of European art often begin with the art of Ancient Israel and the Aegean civilisation, Ancient Aegean civilizations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. Parallel with these significant cultures, art of one form or another existed all over Europe, wherever there were people, leaving signs such as carvings, decorated artifacts and huge standing stones. However a consistent pattern of artistic development within Europe becomes clear only with the Ancient Greek art, art of Ancient Greece, adopted and transformed by Roman art, Rome and carried; with the Roman Empire, across much of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. The influence of the art of the Classical antiquity, Clas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabic Art
Islamic art is a part of Islamic culture and encompasses the visual arts produced since the 7th century CE by people who lived within territories inhabited or ruled by Muslim populations. Referring to characteristic traditions across a wide range of lands, periods, and genres, Islamic art is a concept used first by Western art historians since the late 19th century. Public Islamic art is traditionally non- representational, except for the widespread use of plant forms, usually in varieties of the spiralling arabesque. These are often combined with Islamic calligraphy, geometric patterns in styles that are typically found in a wide variety of media, from small objects in ceramic or metalwork to large decorative schemes in tiling on the outside and inside of large buildings, including mosques. Other forms of Islamic art include Islamic miniature painting, artefacts like Islamic glass or pottery, and textile arts, such as carpets and embroidery. The early developments of Islamic a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Art
Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ''ukiyo-e'' paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga and anime. It has a long history, ranging from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan, sometime in the 10th millennium BC, to the present-day country. Japan has been subject to sudden invasions of new ideas followed by long periods of minimal contact with the outside world. Over time the Japanese developed the ability to absorb, imitate, and finally assimilate those elements of foreign culture that complemented their aesthetic preferences. The earliest complex art in Japan was produced in the 7th and 8th centuries in connection with Buddhism. In the 9th century, as the Japanese began to turn away from China and develop indigenous forms of expression, the secular arts became increasingly important; until the late 15th century, both religious and sec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indian Art
Indian art consists of a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, pottery, and textile arts such as woven silk. Geographically, it spans the entire Indian subcontinent, including what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and at times eastern Afghanistan. A strong sense of design is characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern and traditional forms. The origin of Indian art can be traced to prehistoric settlements in the 3rd millennium BCE. On its way to modern times, Indian art has had cultural influences, as well as religious influences such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Islam. In spite of this complex mixture of religious traditions, generally, the prevailing artistic style at any time and place has been shared by the major religious groups. In historic art, sculpture in stone and metal, mainly religious, has survived the Indian climate better than other media and provides most of the best remains. Many of the mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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