THE TRADITION AND DISSEMINATION OF RAPHIA TEXTILES




Raffia textiles incorporating unknotted "velvet" elements have a long tradition in Africa. Accounts of Portuguese travellers in the 16th and 17th centuries carried reports of such fabrics in the Kingdom of Kongo, where they were used as currency and gathered there from all over the region. Few of these old fabrics have survived in Europe, and only towards the end of the 19th century did cut-pile raffia textiles reappear. The place of origin was given as "Zaïre", today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They came from the Kuba Kingdom and neighbouring peoples such as the Ndengese and the Bushoong.


The Kuba Kingdom, an agglomeration of various ethnic groups, was founded at the beginning of the 17th century. It covers the hilly area bordered by the Kasai and Sankuru Rivers and the lower reaches of the Lulua. "Court historians" passed down the oral history of the Kuba relatively accurately, preserving the historical legacy of the individual groups, their legends and the story of their kings.

The core groups of the Kuba arrived in this area from the north west in the 16th century. In the course of time other ethnic groups joined them, the last of which were the Shoowa, who arrived in the mid-17th century. The Shoowa, who settled south of the Sankuru River, are a Bantu people from the equatorial forests of the Congo. They are settled in a group of 30 villages.



Embroidery, including the technique of cut-pile, or velvet, embroidery, is a craft widely practised among the women of Kuba and the neighbouring regions. The Shoowa stand out for their highly developed technique (dense panels of embroidery), the most complex and inventive graphic designs and the use of more than two colours.