The King Who Lost a War and Gave His Name to a Cloth
Adinkra was a king of Gyaman, and he made two mistakes.
Ntonso, on the Kumasi–Mampong road, where the cloth is stamped by hand.
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The King Who Lost a War and Gave His Name to a Cloth
Adinkra was a king of Gyaman, and he made two mistakes.
He made his own golden stool, in imitation of the one that came out of the sky. And then he lost the war that followed.
He was defeated by the Asante — the tradition places it in the reign of Osei Bonsu, around 1818 — and taken, and killed. And the cloth he was wearing, patterned with symbols, was taken with him, and the Asante kept the cloth and the name of the man on it.
Adinkra, in Twi, also carries the sense of farewell — of parting, of goodbye. Which is why adinkra cloth is worn to funerals, stamped in dark dyes on dark ground, and why the word means both the pattern and the leaving.
At Ntonso they still make it the way it was made. The dye is badie bark, boiled down for days into a thick black tar. The stamps are cut from calabash. A man puts the stamp in the dye and lays it on the cloth, by hand, one impression at a time, in blocks divided by lines drawn with a comb — and every symbol says something.
Gye Nyame: except for God. Sankofa: go back and get it. Dwennimmen, the ram's horns: strength with humility, because the ram fights hard and still submits. Akoma, the heart: patience. Nkyinkyim, the zigzag: a life does not go straight.
You will be handed a stamp and invited to make your own cloth, and you should, because your hand will shake and the line will go crooked, and you will look at the man beside you doing four hundred perfect impressions before lunch.
If you visit Ghana. Ntonso, on the Kumasi–Mampong road, where the cloth is stamped by hand.
Adinkra was a king of Gyaman, and he made two mistakes.
He made his own golden stool, in imitation of the one that came out of the sky. And then he lost the war that followed.
He was defeated by the Asante — the tradition places it in the reign of Osei Bonsu, around 1818 — and taken, and killed. And the cloth he was wearing, patterned with symbols, was taken with him, and the Asante kept the cloth and the name of the man on it.
Adinkra, in Twi, also carries the sense of farewell — of parting, of goodbye. Which is why adinkra cloth is worn to funerals, stamped in dark dyes on dark ground, and why the word means both the pattern and the leaving.
At Ntonso they still make it the way it was made. The dye is badie bark, boiled down for days into a thick black tar. The stamps are cut from calabash. A man puts the stamp in the dye and lays it on the cloth, by hand, one impression at a time, in blocks divided by lines drawn with a comb — and every symbol says something.
Gye Nyame: except for God. Sankofa: go back and get it. Dwennimmen, the ram's horns: strength with humility, because the ram fights hard and still submits. Akoma, the heart: patience. Nkyinkyim, the zigzag: a life does not go straight.
You will be handed a stamp and invited to make your own cloth, and you should, because your hand will shake and the line will go crooked, and you will look at the man beside you doing four hundred perfect impressions before lunch.