Korhogo Cloth
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Korhogo cloth is an African textile made by the
Senufo people The Senufo people, also known as Siena, Senefo, Sene, Senoufo, and Syénambélé, are a West African ethnolinguistic group. They consist of diverse subgroups living in a region spanning the northern Ivory Coast, the southeastern Mali and the west ...
of Korhogo, Ivory Coast. Often described as being in the shadows of bogolafini (mud cloth) and
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 ...
, korhogo comes in neutral and earthy tones like browns, blacks and creams. Korhogo is made by hand painting designs on hand woven and hand spun cotton fabric. The paintings are done using a specially fermented mud-based and natural vegetal pigment that darkens over time, and designs are usually drawn on using a stencil. They are decorated with symbols of humans, natural elements like the sun, moon and stars and animals, all of which are rooted in Senufo culture and mythology. The Senufo use the cloth as a shield against vengeful spirits by wearing or hanging them in homes/shrines. Korhogo is commissioned for hunters (important heroic figures) and rite of passage events like funerals/special ceremonies. Men and women are involved in the fabrication of the cloth. Both cultivate the cotton, the women spin the cotton into yarn and prepare the dye while men weave and decorate the cloth. Upon completion, the fabric is often used for clothing, decor and many more.


History

This type of cloth came to being in the late 1960s and early 1970s and remains popular with tourists and urban Ivorians today. Eager to sustain Senufo traditions and help expand the local market, American Peace Corps volunteers encouraged the people to explore new means of clothing production. Fila cloth consisted of six stripes of cotton cloth that had been sewn together and served as the prototype for which korhogo was built upon. Fila is mostly decorated with hand painted stripes as its primary motif and zig-zag designs symbolic of the leopard. To preserve fila's traditional characteristics, Korhogo cloth producers continued to use hand spun cotton strips woven by their Dyula neighbors. However, unlike fila, Korhogo cloth quickly became the canvas onto which cloth producers painted a large variety of imagery derived from the local society and culture. The earliest examples of Korhogo cloth have fila strips which were used as the grid where visual motifs would be painted. When the Grahams had coveted the cloth by the early 1980s, the Senufo cloth makers had abandoned the strips and used the entire cloth to frame the painted motifs.


Symbolic meanings

There are over 8
motifs
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created by the makers of korhogo cloth and they create a story on the cloth when combined. Some popular symbols:{{Cite book, title=African Fabrics: Sewing Contemporary Fashion with Ethnic Flair, last=Luke-Boone, first=Ronke, publisher=Krause Publications, year=2011, isbn=978-0-87341-914-7, location=700 East State Street Iola, WI, 54990-0001, page
46–51
url=https://archive.org/details/africanfabrics0000luke/page/46
* Guinea fowl: feminine beauty * Chicken: Maternity * Goat: Male prowess * Trees: Sacred wood where Poro societies met * Chameleon: Death * Fish: Life and water * Fish bones: Drought * Lion: Royal power * Hunter: Mysteries of the forest * Swallow: Trust * Crocodile and the Lizard: Male Fertility * Snake and the Turtle: Earth * Sun, Moon and Stars: The first elements God created


See also

Korhogo Korhogo is a city in northern Ivory Coast. It is the seat of both Savanes District and Poro Region. It is also a commune and the seat of and a sub-prefecture of Korhogo Department. In the 2014 census, the city had a population of 243,048, making ...
Senufo People The Senufo people, also known as Siena, Senefo, Sene, Senoufo, and Syénambélé, are a West African ethnolinguistic group. They consist of diverse subgroups living in a region spanning the northern Ivory Coast, the southeastern Mali and the west ...


References

* Korhogo Woven fabrics African clothing Ivorian culture Textile arts of Africa