Wax print: from Java to Helmond to Accra, the long journey of 'African' cloth

On a market stall in Accra, a trader might hold up a length of cloth and call it by a name that has nothing to do with its pattern: "The poor don't eat stones". Another bolt is "Efie aboseaa", gravel; another, "Subura", a water well. Another design is "You fly, I fly", popular with newly married women as a promise of fidelity; another is "Mama Benz", which commemorates a Mercedes bought by a Togolese family of cloth traders (Hyperallergic; MyJoyOnline). These names are the surprising part. The cloth itself was designed in the Netherlands, in a town called Helmond, as an industrial answer to a craft from the other side of the world. It is called wax print, Dutch wax, ankara, kitenge, chitenge, chitenje, depending on where you are standing. It is arguably the most visible textile in Africa and, at the same time, among the most contested. This article traces how a Javanese craft became a Dutch product, then a West African fashion, and why the question "is it really African?" has no single answer. ## Java: the craft the Dutch wanted to copy Batik is a resist-dye technique: wax is applied to cloth so that dye cannot reach