Winu (Bushoong)
Kuba cloth was used for ceremonial skirts worn in ritual dances and masked performances, as tribute and prestige textiles, and as funerary regalia for noblewomen — the body of the deceased was laid on an inclined platform (mweek) and covered in layer…
Kuba cloth developed within the Kuba kingdom of the Democratic Republic of Congo over roughly three centuries of relative isolation from outside influence, which allowed a distinctive geometric art tradition to take shape largely independent of foreign contact. The earliest documented pieces were collected in the early 20th century by ethnographer Emil Torday from King Kot aPe.
Kuba cloth was used for ceremonial skirts worn in ritual dances and masked performances, as tribute and prestige textiles, and as funerary regalia for noblewomen — the body of the deceased was laid on an inclined platform (mweek) and covered in layers of decorated textiles, with the winu serving as the final covering.
Many individual motifs carry names, though the same pattern is sometimes known by different names depending on who is asked. The "Woot" pattern is named for the Kuba people's mythological founder and represents interlacing; "ingal," a Bushoong motif, means "knot of wood"; and the "Kwete" design is popularly said to have been inspired by the tire tracks of a Belgian colonial official's motorcycle. One source notes that roughly 10,000 pieces left the Kuba kingdom over just twenty years in the mid-to-late 20th century, placing real pressure on the craft's continuity, though it is not clear whether production itself has declined to the same degree. Kuba textiles are held today in major museum collections worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum and the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Men cultivate raffia palm and weave the base cloth on a single-pedal inclined loom, then pound it with a mallet to soften it. Women carry out the embroidery and finishing: they trace guide lines in stem stitch, thread short-cut raffia fibres beneath the weave with a needle, then trim the resulting tufts and hand-rub the cloth to raise the velvet-like pile. A single raffia square, roughly 26 by 28 inches, takes a skilled weaver two to three hours — a weaver can produce ten to fifteen squares a day — but a finished, fully embroidered piece can take months or even years to complete. A clan leader chooses the overall design and assigns sections to embroiderers according to their skill level.
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