Korhogo Cloth: Animals and Stories Hand-Painted on Cotton by the Senufo

Around the city of Korhogo in the north of Côte d'Ivoire (in West Africa, French-speaking, the world's largest cocoa producer), the Senufo paint dark brown and black animals, human figures, suns, moons and stars on handwoven cotton: this is the painted textile commonly known as "Korhogo cloth". Today it often hangs on restaurant walls and in hotels and craft shops, but behind it lies a complete handmade process, linked to an older tradition of ritual cloth.

From cotton to painted cloth: a process shared between men and women

According to textile research compiled by Brown University, Korhogo cloth is made roughly as follows:

The Wikipedia entry adds that the pigments include a specially fermented mud-based dye and plant colourants, that the palette is dominated by earth tones such as brown, black and off-white, and that the colours darken over time.

What is painted on the cloth

Common subjects include human figures, the sun, moon and stars, and animals such as chameleons, swallows, snakes, fish and lions; painters also combine several images to convey more complex meanings. One example that the sources describe more clearly is the guinea fowl, seen as a symbol of feminine beauty; the leopard is also common.

Long lists of "what each animal means" circulate online, but many of these claims lack reliable sources. When looking at a cloth, rather than decoding each figure one by one, start by appreciating the overall composition and the rhythm of the lines, and if you have questions, ask the painter directly.

From fila ritual cloth to the tourist market

One forerunner of Korhogo cloth is the Senufo fila cloth: made of several handwoven cotton strips sewn together and painted with stripes and leopard-spot-like zigzags. Brown University's material notes that painted cloths known as filafani wii were traditionally commissioned for protection when a diviner advised that spirits needed to be appeased; some were also ordered as wall hangings for shrines. The Wikipedia entry likewise mentions that such cloths were worn or hung in homes and shrines for protection, and were specially commissioned for hunters, regarded as heroes in Senufo society, or for rites of passage such as funerals. Because of this history, the same motif may carry different weight in different settings.

From the 1960s to the early 1970s, US Peace Corps volunteers helped bring this type of cloth to the tourist market, and Korhogo cloth became popular on the art market as a result. Wikipedia also notes that early painted cloths still used the seams between the narrow strips as a compositional grid, but by the early 1980s painters were increasingly treating the whole cloth as a single picture. Today it is loved by tourists and urban Ivorians alike, both as decoration and for clothing.

One line for Asian readers

Buying a Korhogo cloth is like buying an ink painting made with cotton, earth and plants; once you understand how it is made, you will know the difference between a handmade piece and a print.

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References: Brown University, Off the Roll — Korhogo Textile (Senufo); Wikipedia — Korhogo cloth