How it began
Korhogo cloth took its present form in the late 1960s and early 1970s among the Senufo of Korhogo in northern Côte d'Ivoire. American Peace Corps volunteers, wishing to sustain Senufo traditions and widen the local market, encouraged the makers to explore new kinds of cloth. The makers built on fila, an older cloth of six sewn cotton strips painted with stripes and zigzags.
Before it existed
Fila cloth carried mostly hand-painted stripes, with zigzag designs symbolic of the leopard. Painted cloth was worn or hung in homes and shrines as protection against vengeful spirits and was commissioned for hunters and for funerals and other rites of passage.
How it works
Men and women grow the cotton. Women spin it and prepare the dye, and men weave narrow strips and paint them. The painter draws figures, often with a stencil, using iron-rich mud that has been fermented. The whole cloth is then submerged in a dye made from boiled leaves. The mud reacts with the plant dye and darkens over time, leaving brown and black figures on a cream ground.
How it spread
The earliest examples kept the fila strips as a grid for the motifs. By the early 1980s makers had dropped the grid and used the entire cloth as a single picture. The cloth became popular with tourists and with urban Ivorians, and examples entered museum collections in Europe and the United States.
Where it stands today
The cloth is still made and sold. There are more than 80 motifs, including guinea fowl, fish, chameleons, hunters, and the sun, moon and stars, which together tell a story. Panels are hung as decoration, and the cloth is also made into clothing and other goods.
