An Adire eleko women’s wrapper from a recently acquired, exceptionally fine collection of 1960-1970s-era adire cloths sourced in the early 1990s.
The cassava starch-resist and dyed design epitomizes the Yoruba textile artists' mastery of the ancient regional tradition of indigo dyeing, while the stencil that was drawn and cut to provide a template for a single repeated motif, reveals a beautiful fluidity and precision of hand and line. Executed with keen precision, this variant of the well-known tortoise motif ahun or ijaba, alluding to a trickster character from Yoruba folklore, evokes turtles swimming in a swirling, watery dimension.
$1,250
