The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Cotton garment with rows of rectangles and squares striped with predominantly warm colors, alternating in width between horizontal and vertical, and some overlapping. Occasionally stylized hands, insects, animals, and other geometric shapes have been woven in a single color over patches.

Prestige cloth (kete or kente)

c. 1930s–50s

Africa, West Africa, Ghana or Togo, Ewe-style weaver

Cotton and dye
Overall: 322.6 x 175.3 cm (127 x 69 in.)
L. E. Holden Fund 2023.9
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Look closely! The weaver added extra weft (horizontal) threads to create shapes like hands, birds, insects, knives, combs, and four-legged animals.

Description

An elite Ghanaian or Togolese man wore this garment at special occasions. Wrapped around his waist and tossed over his shoulder, the kete’s vibrant colors and many patterns would have made his wealth apparent. The weaver made this in a single strip, which he or a tailor then cut into twenty strips and sewed together by hand. The man who made this was highly skilled, alternating passages of weaving featuring the warp (vertical) or weft (horizontal) threads—as well as inserting extra weft threads to make patterns in different shapes.
  • -May 2022
    Private Collection, Togo, sold to Bubakar (Abubakar) Dukruri
    May 2022-November 2022
    Bubakar (Abubakar) Dukruri, Accra, Ghana, sold to Duncan Clarke
    November 2022-2023
    Duncan Clarke (Adire African Textiles), London, England, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    2023-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • {{cite web|title=Prestige cloth (kete or kente)|url=false|author=|year=c. 1930s–50s|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2023.9