Bark cloth

Another thing that turned up in my (ongoing!) sort-out of the studio - photos of Mbuti mud cloth, made by the Pygmy tribes of the Congo. The one on the left was the happy inspiration for my Fissues quilt - I used those sorts of marks, handstitched onto a quilted background, and loved working that way. The other photos in this little collection show other kinds of marks ... but so far I haven't used them for further work.

The barkcloth is created by men and decorated by women: the men take strips of bark off a tree, and pound it with various mallets and tools to make it flat and soft. The women then make dyes from various fruits from the forest, and paint designs on the barkcloth. The designs reflect the look, sounds, and feel of the forest around them. The blank space is valued for its symbolism of silence (ekimi), which to the Mbuti represents cohesiveness, whereas sound represents chaos (akami). Other designs can represent the skin of the animals within the forest. Another line of thought is that the paintings are a form of ethnographic mapping. These pieces are worn for many different ceremonies and occasions, from boys enacting their puberty rituals to clothing newborns, and have high sentimental value to the Mbuti (or did till there became a market for them....) More info is here; design elements are discussed here; and this is a short video showing various barkcloths, along with Mbuti music and sounds of the village.