The History of Our African Print.

               THHE HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN PRINT.
 The Ankara cloth has been made generally popular by West African countries like Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal, but unfortunately, the cloth is not originally from any of the above countries. Otherwise known as African Print with its beautiful patterns, motifs and colour, Ankara has a rather complicated set of origin. According to Yinka Shonibaire, the well known Nigerian artiste whose work focuses on these prints, said that “ the fabrics are not really authentically African the way people think. They prove to have a cross bred cultural background quite of their own”. He was quoted by the online magazine Slate.
HOW IT CAME ABOUT.
      In the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, locals were using the basic technique of  wax resist dying to create batik. In the mid-19th century, these handmade textiles attracted west African men who were enlisted by the Dutch to boost their army in Indonesia. These men, some of them slaves and mercenaries brought these textiles back to their homes. The Indonesian batik suddenly caught on with many in west Africa.
       Meanwhile, the Europeans were also beginning to come out with ways to manufacture their own versions of batik. Their aim was to flood the Indonesian market with their own machine made version which of course will be cheaper than the handmade ones. They were able to achieve this at the end of the 19th century, when a Belgian printer developed a method for applying resin to both sides of a cotton cloth. But the machine made versions produced some imperfections which did not please the Indonesian market.
      Hence the Dutch had to look for a new market, they turned to west Africa. Interestingly, the people of west Africa did not see anything wrong with the imperfections so they adopted the Indonesian inspired fabric as their own.

    SEY FREDERICA.
DCS20566.

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