Kuba cloth panel — interlace pattern, 40 × 30 cm
By Cécile Muamba · Kasai-Central, Democratic Republic of Congo
Every piece on Amussu is a one-off. If you want this, you take it now.
Either way, you are buying from Céciledirectly. The fee model and the relationship are the same — the only thing that changes is whether the piece already exists.
A single panel in the classic Kuba interlace pattern. Natural raffia with a dark dyed border. This is the pattern Béatrice is learning. I made this one as a demonstration piece and it came out well enough to offer.
Three weeks. Raffia is harvested locally, dried, and split before weaving. The cut-pile surface is achieved by cutting loops after the cloth is woven — it is slow work.
The person who made this.
I weave Kuba cloth — the raffia cut-pile fabric from the Kasai region. The patterns are geometric and precise. Each one has a name and a history. My grandmother taught me twelve patterns. I can now teach twenty-seven. The cloth takes a long time. A piece the size of a place mat can take two weeks. A full hanging takes three months. I joined Amussu because someone in Kinshasa told me people in Europe paid forty euros for machine-made fabric that looked like mine. I want to be paid for mine directly.