Textiles & Fabric — African Crafts

Crafts

Fante Asafo Flag - Handmade Appliqué Textile, 140 x 85cm

A hand appliqued Fante Asafo flag on cotton, 140 x 85cm. Leopards, an armed company and a Union Jack canton, worked in the traditional Ghanaian manner. Asafo flags, or frankaa, belong to the military companies of the Fante people along the coast of Ghana. Each company had its own, commissioned from a local flag maker, and they were carried at festivals and funerals rather than hung on a wall. They were never decoration. They were statements, and usually pointed ones. Almost every Asafo flag illustrates a proverb, and the proverb is usually aimed at a rival company. That is the convention the imagery here follows: two leopards, a small house, a company of figures marching in file with rifles, and the company number set in a panel. The boast is the point of an Asafo flag, not the animals. The Union Jack in the upper corner places the design in the colonial period. Flags made before Ghana's independence in 1957 commonly carried it, and after independence many makers replaced it with the Ghanaian flag. This one keeps the older arrangement. Appliqué on cotton, which means every element is a separate piece of cloth cut and stitched onto the ground rather than printed onto it. The leopards are worked in a spotted cloth, the figures in solid black, and the whole panel is framed by a sawtooth border in black, white, cream and ochre. The edges are fringed. To be clear about what this is: a contemporary flag made by hand in the traditional manner, not an antique. Genuinely old Asafo flags are extremely scarce and almost all of them sit in museums and private collections. At 140 x 85cm this is a large textile, and it works best hung flat against a plain wall where the appliqué and the fringe can be read properly. Above a bed, down a hallway, or in a room that needs one large warm object rather than several small ones. Care: hang it out of direct sunlight, which fades dyed cotton. Do not wash it. Dust it gently with a soft brush, or a vacuum on low suction through the upholstery attachment, and if it ever needs more than that, take it to a textile conservator rather than a dry cleaner.