How it began
Bogolanfini is a handmade cotton fabric from Mali that is traditionally dyed with fermented mud. The dye technique is associated with several Malian ethnic groups, but the Bamana version became the best known outside the country, and museums describe the cloth as originating among the Bamana peoples of Mali. The Bambara word combines bogo (earth or mud), lan (with) and fini (cloth). The town of San is named as the center of production and the source of the highest quality cloth. The sources consulted give no firm date for when the technique began.
How it works
In traditional production men weave narrow cotton strips about 15 centimeters wide on narrow looms, and the strips are stitched into cloths about 1 meter by 1.5 meters. Women then dye them. The cloth is first soaked in a bath made from mashed and boiled leaves of the n'gallama tree, which turns it yellow. After drying in the sun it is painted with a metal tool or wooden stick using mud collected from riverbeds and fermented for up to a year in a clay jar. The mud is a slip clay with a high iron content, and a chemical reaction between the mud and the leaf-dyed cloth leaves a lasting dark color.
How it spread
Bogolanfini became a popular Malian export, notably to the United States, where it is sold as mud cloth, either as a symbol of African American culture or as a generically ethnic decorative fabric. It is exported worldwide for use in fashion, fine art and decoration. In Mali it is worn by people of all ethnicities, appears in Malian cinema and on Malian musicians, and is made into Western-style miniskirts and jackets as well as traditional robes.
Who pushed back
Commercial success changed who makes the cloth and how. After the overthrow of Moussa Traore in 1991, many young men lost previously guaranteed government jobs and scholarships and took up bogolanfini production. As a result most cloth is now produced by men rather than women, and the traditional year-long apprenticeships have been replaced by short, informal training sessions.
Where it stands today
By around 2000, large quantities were being mass-produced for tourist and export markets using simplified techniques. These fabrics use simpler designs, often applied by stencil in black on a yellow or orange background, a method that is about six to seven times faster than the traditional one. Museums in the United States collect and exhibit Bamana mud cloth, including a Dallas Museum of Art exhibition that ran from 2021 to 2023.
