Indigo Textiles amongst the Yoruba

By Kwadwo Opoku | Jan. 21st 4:21pm

Amongst the Yuroba, textiles which could be used as a status symbol, for decoration or for important occasions are known as called "Adire".

The central guiding philosophy behind the Adire fabric is the carefully limited the amount of dye used on the cloth, to bring out more if its typically blue cloth background, while maintaining the impact of the symbolism being portrayed in the ink. Adire is a more minimalistic way of fabric dyeing. In current times, Adire has become less and less practised as time goes on, since it requires brightly coloured cloth, which can be very costly for the mostly rural villages that practice in dyeing it. In addition to that, the creation of this minimalistic design and its process is quite labor intensive.

In an attempt to keep this art from being lost forever, a few schools have been created which specialize in Adire cloth. These schools are typically boarding schools to accommodate people who may be moving from the village to attend. The schools provide shelter, food and expand on the Adire cloth techniques by trying to use other materials to make the process more cost effective. One of these methods is the the use of Batik, which relies on mass produced industrial dyes, rather than the typically labor intensive naturally created tree dyes.