Mid-20th-century examples of strip-woven prestige cloths called kente, were made by the Asante (or Ashanti) people of Ghana, mostly in the town of Bonwire. Composed of twenty-four handwoven strips (each about four inches wide) sewn together along their vertical edges, this large kente cloth are typical of those made to be men’s wrappers. The tradition of male weavers in the Asante Kingdom and other areas of West Africa creating elaborately patterned textiles for court regalia dates back centuries. Surviving examples from the 19th- and early 20th-century were made of silk imported from the Mediterranean across the Sahara. Because of the high intrinsic value of this trade material and their intricate workmanship, kente cloth wrappers were originally reserved for royal use. By the mid-20th-century, when these two examples were woven, rayon threads manufactured in Europe had replaced silk, and kente cloth was worn by many Ghanaians on special occasions. Kente cloth and its distinctive colors and patterns have resonated with pan-Africanism since President Kwame Nkrumah adopted kente cloth as a symbol of Ghana’s independence from British rule in 1957, most famously wearing a kente cloth wrapper while visiting the White House to meet President Eisenhower the following year. Each color and geometric pattern has its own significance, symbolizing a range of attributes from wisdom and intelligence to hope and benevolence. Since the mid-1990s, many Black students in the United States have donned kente-inspired stoles for their high school and college graduations.

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