The words behind the cloth, in plain language. Where a term is illustrated by one of our heritage guides, it is linked.
A
Adinkra
Asante cloth stamped by hand with symbols, each tied to a proverb or saying, traditionally with calabash stamps and a dark bark dye.See: Adinkra
Appliqué
Decoration made by cutting shapes from one cloth and stitching them onto another, as in the narrative banners of the former kingdom of Dahomey.See: Fon appliqué
B
Barkcloth
Cloth made not by weaving but by beating the inner bark of a tree into a sheet, as with the mutuba tree in Buganda.See: Barkcloth
Batik
A resist-dye technique in which wax is applied to cloth so that dye cannot reach the covered areas; the wax is removed afterwards to reveal the pattern.
Brocade (supplementary weft)
Pattern created by extra weft threads that float over the base cloth and are woven in only where the design needs them.See: Aso Oke
C
Crackle
The fine veined lines left when dye seeps through cracks in the wax resist. Machine-printed imitations of batik reproduce it as an irregular pattern.
D
Dutch Wax / wax print
Industrial cotton cloth printed with roller or resin techniques to imitate batik, produced in the Netherlands, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and elsewhere and sold across Africa as "African print".
E
Embroidery
Decoration worked with a needle and thread on a finished ground cloth, such as toghu on velvet or Siwa embroidery.See: Toghu, Siwa embroidery
G
Geographical Indication (GI)
A legal protection that reserves a product name to goods made in a defined place, under defined methods. Ghana registered kente as its first GI in 2025.
H
Heddle
The loom component that lifts selected warp threads to open the shed for the weft. More heddles allow more complex patterns: a kente with three heddles can carry denser designs than one with a single pair.See: Kente
I
Ikat
A technique where sections of the threads are tied and dyed before weaving, so that the pattern appears as the cloth is woven. In Yoruba aso oke, resist-dyed warp ikat was popular until the 1960s.See: Aso Oke
Indigo
A blue dye from the leaves of certain plants, built up through repeated dips in a fermented vat; the cloth turns blue as it oxidises in the air after each dip.See: Adire, Indigo in Benin
M
Mordant
A substance used to help a dye bind to a fibre. In bogolanfini, a leaf bath prepares the cloth so that the mud fixes a dark brown to it.
Mud cloth (bogolanfini)
Malian cloth painted with fermented iron-rich mud over a leaf-treated ground. "Bogolanfini" means "cloth made with mud" in Bambara.See: Bogolan
N
Narrow-strip loom
A horizontal loom that weaves a long, narrow band of cloth, usually 10 to 25 cm wide, which is cut and sewn edge to edge into a larger cloth. Used for kente, aso oke and kaasa.See: Kente, Kaasa
O
Oxidation
The reaction with air that develops certain colours: indigo turns from yellow-green to blue, and bogolan mud patterns darken as the painted cloth dries and is washed.
R
Raffia
A fibre from the leaves of the raffia palm, used woven into cloth in the Congo Basin and as resist thread in ndop.See: Kuba cloth, Ndop
Resist dyeing
Any technique that blocks dye from chosen areas of a cloth, using wax, starch, mud, stitching or ties, so the protected areas keep their original colour.See: Adire, Gara
S
Selvedge
The finished edge of a woven cloth, which stops it from fraying. On industrial wax prints, brand marks are often printed on it.
Shed
The gap formed when heddles lift some warp threads, through which the weft is passed.
Stencil
A cut-out template through which paint or dye is applied. In mud cloth production, stencils speed up work several times over compared with freehand painting.
T
Taka
The Mandinka word for tying: the folding, pleating and binding of cloth before dyeing that produces striped tie-dye patterns in Sierra Leonean gara.See: Gara
Tie-dye
A resist technique in which cloth is folded, gathered and bound before dipping, so the dye cannot reach the tied areas.See: Gara
W
Warp and weft
The two sets of threads in weaving. Warp threads run lengthwise and are held under tension on the loom; weft threads pass across them. In a weft-faced weave, such as a kaasa, the weft hides the warp.See: Kaasa
Weft-faced
A weave in which weft threads are packed so closely that they cover the warp, so colour and pattern come from the weft.
