Art at Hosmer: Ghana: Adinkra Stamped Cloth

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Ghana: Adinkra Stamped Cloth

After our Kente cloth project, we learned about another type of cloth, Adinkra stamped cloth. Adinkra (ah-DEEN-krah) cloth is a hand-printed fabric made in Ghana. As with Kente, it was also developed by the Ashanti people.

https://www.hamillgallery.com/ASANTE/AsanteAdinkra/AsanteAdinkra01.html

Adinkra cloths were traditionally made for royalty to wear at religious ceremonies. Adinkra cloth is stamped and patterned with traditional Ashanti symbols. Each symbol has its own name and meaning based on values like family, tolerance, harmony, determination, etc.

People decorate cloth by using a black dye made of bark, called Adinkera aduru, and this is what gives the cloth its name. Using the dye, they draw lines on the cloth to divide it into squares. Next, they carve symbols into calabash gourds, press the gourds into the dye, and stamp the symbols onto the fabric.

Students designed their own Adinkra stamps, either looking at reference images for inspiration from existing Ashanti symbols or creating their own. They cut out their designs from foam and glued them into cardboard to create their stamp. We let these dry and the following class, used black paint to print with our stamps.

Students rolled out paint using a brayer on our bench hooks and then rolled the brayer on top of our Adinkra stamp. Then students picked up the stamp and pressed it down on their paper, re-applying paint in between each print. Students did a wonderful job making the prints fit their paper in rows.

After two classes of printmaking, students created a frame for their Adinkra prints. We used red, green or yellow paper to reflect the colors of the flag of Ghana. Students designed their frames to demonstrate pattern and repetition, like our prints, and glued their Adinkra prints in the center. Below are some examples of our finished Adinkra print artwork: