Ashanti Cloth Info
Our Kente cloth is hand made, authentic, and rare. It is from Ashanti in Congo and has taken much effort to produce. Every cloth we sell has a significant meaning and has been bought at a fair price. The colors of these cloth are spectacular and it can be used as a wall hanging, bed spread, blanket, runner, and anything else you can think of.
Kente is the most widely known and appreciated of all the African cloth’s. It is also known as Ashanti cloth because it is made from the Ashanti people of Ghana. Kente cloth can be traced back to the ancient African Kingdoms that flourished between 300 AD and 1600 AD. The legend that goes with the Kente cloth is that a man named Ota Karaabn and his friend Bonwire were watching a spider weave its web one day. They took great notice and started to weave a piece of raffie and kept improving upon this skill. The cloth was given to the Ashanti king as a gift and from there it was adopted and encouraged by the Ashanti people of Ghana.
Cotton is bought by the men in the marketplace and comes in strips that are about 4 inches wide. Several of the strips are carefully hand-sewn together to obtain the desired size. There are many colors of yarns that are combined in particular ways to reflect the many meanings of the Kente cloth. The women then dye the yarns in many different colors and then the men hand sew them together.
For the Ashanti tribe in Congo, Kente is much more that just a cloth. Kente is a visual representation of political thought, social values, religious beliefs, oral literature, ethics, philosophy, and history. The cloth was originally reserved for the royalty in Ghana and was very limited to special occasions. The cloth is worn by many more people now but the cloth is still associated with wealth, cultural sophistication, and high social status.
Kente has a huge symbolic significance for the people of Ghana. Each cloth has a name and a meaning; each color and pattern carry a meaning. Women tend to prefer cloths that have dominant colors and are lighter or tinted; such as white, light yellow, pink, purple, light blue, turquoise Men prefer cloths that are darker in color and a little less colorful. They prefer colors such as black, dark blue, dark green, maroon, dark yellow, orange, and red.