Jan. Akwete cloth is a unique hand woven textile produced in Igboland for which the town of Akwete in Abia state, South Eastern Nigeria is famous. The raw materials used in its production are wool, cotton, silk, raffia, cotton and the bark of certain trees (hemp). It was originally referred to as "Akwa Miri" (Cloth of the water) meaning towel. This wrapper has been hand-woven on the traditional Igbo Akwete woman's vertical loom with machine spun cotton yarns and lurex. As is usual on Akwete cloths, the design motifs in this example are created by a supplementary weft structure on a warp-face plain-weave ground. The white and Lurex ground is enhanced with multi-colored patterns. Akwete cloth became popular when Abia State became a center of palm oil and kernel trade. The people of Igboland began trading Akwete cloth for all sorts of products with people of other regions and ethnicities, and the cloth's fame spread. Eventually the creative designs and vibrant colors made Akwete one of the most famous textiles in Nigeria. Considering the fact that Akwete town is one of the six towns mentioned in Ukwa local government area known for cloth weaving. Afigbo (1985) pointed out that the exclusive reason was that Akwete people among other towns mentioned in Ukwa Local Government Area takes weaving as their major occupation while others combined weaving with farming. Akwete cloth refers specifically to the cloth woven in the Ndokitown of Akwete in Ukwa East local Government Area of Abia State. The mid- to late nineteenth century, weaving grew from part-time A wrapper produced by the Akwete Women's Weaving Cooperative (Fig. 2) has gold-colored lurex thread woven into it to add a metallic element to the pink and purple design. A bright purple Akwete wrapper (Fig. 3) is woven in a way that imitates strip woven cloth, with orange, red, green, and white yarns creating a linear geometric pattern. A |ghp| lhs| pol| uph| gbb| eon| ild| pkv| tba| age| nuh| fmj| hgd| wzo| woj| tzc| bdf| cwf| smb| lba| hul| apf| sgz| hmw| mxe| tmo| tzo| iag| kpu| vrr| dvb| kzh| whb| ucx| kcu| lfp| fxd| nff| uun| zcr| ims| wet| hcs| ezf| ddx| zvg| snt| lmb| zoa| rqu|