Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Robe (Boubou Lomasa)
Soninke (Possibly Senegal or Mali; Northern Africa and the Sahel)
Late 19th century
- Medium
- Handspun cotton, indigo dye; polychrome silk and cotton; strip weave, hand embroidery
- Classification
- Textile
- Dimensions
- 124.5 × 194.3 cm (49 × 76 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Senegal
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Africa
- Credit line
- Arts of Africa and the Americas Curatorial Discretionary and Vedder Price Kaufmann & Kammholtz Endowment funds
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This type of robe was worn by chiefs, dignitaries, emirs, and other high-ranking men in 19th-century West Africa. It marked the wearer’s standing and prestige, and also identified him as a Muslim. The talismanic motifs were typically designed and stitched by Qur’anic scholars who found inspiration in Arabic texts. Soninke women no longer practice these embroidery styles and indigo-dyeing techniques, which impacted the weaving traditions of a vast region north and south of the Sahara.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
