Ndop (Grassfields languages) · Akya (Jukun (funeral shroud))
Ndop belongs to the Grassfields of north-west Cameroon, where it is a cloth of kings. The history is a trade story. According to the Textile Museum of Canada, the Bamileke and Bamum peoples imported cloth of this kind in the 19th century from the Wukari region of Nigeria, where it was made by the Jukun, and the name ndop is said to come from the trade route by which it moved. Around 1910, King Njoya of Bamum encouraged local weavers and dyers to make it, establishing a textile industry that continues up to today.
Accounts of where each step of the work takes place differ. Dealer and collection records describe cotton strips woven in the Garoua region of northern Cameroon, stitched by Bamileke women, then returned north for indigo dyeing, while other sources attribute the cloth to east-central Nigeria and Hausa traders. We have not resolved those differences and treat the supply chain as plural, not single.
Handspun cotton is woven into narrow strips, which are sewn together to form a large cloth.
Raffia thread is stitched into the cloth to block the dye in chosen areas.
The cloth is dipped in an indigo vat. Unstitched areas turn blue.
The raffia is removed, leaving the stitched areas pale against the blue. A museum record of a large cloth notes that the binding work for such a piece would take months.
In the Grassfields, ndop marks royal and ritual spaces. It is hung as a backdrop for important appearances, objects and regalia at ceremonies and festivals, and it is worn as a body wrapper to assert royal status. Some cloths are worn by members of the Kuosi society as part of masquerade costume. Among the Jukun, the related cloth, akya, is a funeral shroud.
The cloth goes by several names depending on the community, and the patterns differ between Bamum and Bamileke production. We do not publish a pattern dictionary here because the meanings in the sources are not consistent enough to state without risk of error.
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