Textiles from Mali |
Featured Textiles: merging culture, agriculture and
art;
Hunter’s shirt, Bamanan
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160 x 85 cm Cotton, hand-spun. 1978 Bògòlan craftwork. 206 amulets.
Leather and cotton fringes. Mirror Originates from the region of Koulikoro
81-x-664
Hunter’s shirt, Bamanan
A hunter kills wild animals and therefore needs the protection of amulets.
The brown and yellow serve as camouflage. Across the entire savanna,
from the Atlantic to northern Nigeria, these are the two colors – never
indigo blue – that appear on hunters’ shirts, richly adorned with amulets.
(Brown and yellow are associated with nature and the bush. Indigo, by
contrast, belongs in the village, society and “culture”.) As it is a
very personal article of clothing, each shirt is unique. They cannot
be bought in the marketplace, nor given as presents. Apart from the
brown and yellow colors, hunters’ shirts have in common the objects
sewn on them: amulets, animals’ teeth, shells, leather fringes, little
mirrors set in leather, etc. These objects are all intended to protect
the hunter from the vengeance of the animal they have killed.
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