Tradition Affiliation: Ashanti

  • Nana Akwessi Afrane, Chief Weaver of Asante?

    Nana Akwessi Afrane, Chief Weaver of Asante?

    Master Weaver KR-W-2026-15044
    Name
    Nana Akwessi Afrane
    Registry No.
    KR-W-2026-15044
    Community
    Bonwire
    Workshop
    Asante region, Ghana (precise location unknown)
    Years Active
    Active circa 1980
    Lineage
    Chief weaver of Asante, a stool position conferred by the Asantehene. Full apprenticeship and training record unknown.
    Provenance
    Research in Progress

    Somewhere in Ghana, in the early months of 1981, a man carried a selection of freshly woven kente cloth into a transaction that would send it, quietly and permanently, to the other side of the world. His name was Nana Akwessi Afrane. His title, recorded in the British Museum’s purchase book at the time of acquisition, was chief weaver of Asante.

    That is very nearly all we know.

    The cloth, at least nine strips across two lots, woven in cotton, in the colours of burgundy, green, black, and yellow, passed into the Africa, Oceania and Americas collection at the British Museum in London, where it was catalogued, numbered, and consigned to storage. It has not been on public display. The museum’s record names the maker only in a footnote, and only by the role he held at the point of sale: vendor. The man behind the title vanishes from the archive.

    Yet the title itself speaks. In Asante tradition, the role of chief weaver is not an honorary one. It is a stool position, conferred by the Asantehene and held within the formal hierarchy of the court at Kumasi. The weavers of Bonwire, the royal weaving village from which the Asantehene’s own cloth has been drawn for centuries, are organised under a succession of titled chiefs, among them the Kentehene, the Yokomaahene, and the Awinfohene. To hold any such title in 1980 was to stand within a living lineage stretching back to the court of Osei Tutu I. It was not a casual distinction.

    Nana Akwessi Afrane, then, was no ordinary vendor. He was a custodian of one of the most demanding and storied craft traditions in West Africa, producing cloth that the museum buyer noted had been woven “in the last year or two”, work made not for a foreign collector, but as the ordinary output of a master still at the height of his practice. That the cloth found its way to London at all was simply commerce. What it represented was something far older.

    The strips he sold measure 204 centimetres in length and 10 centimetres across, the standard geometry of Asante strip-weaving, each one a self-contained unit of pattern and intention, designed to be joined with its companions into a cloth that would speak, in colour and design, to those who knew how to read it. Burgundy carries the weight of maturity and elevated status. Green speaks of growth and renewal. Black signals union with the ancestors. Yellow, the colour closest to gold, invokes wealth and royalty. These were not decorative choices. They were a vocabulary.

    Who chose that vocabulary? What patterns did those strips carry? What name did the cloth bear, for every Asante kente bears a name, drawn from proverb, history, or the weaver’s own philosophical inheritance? These questions remain open. The British Museum’s record does not say.

    A Name Worth Following

    The name Afrane carries its own resonance in Asante history. It is associated most prominently with the royal lineage of Edweso, the town of Nana Akwasi Afrane Okpese, a nineteenth-century Edwesohene whose name still figures in Ashanti oral tradition. Whether Nana Akwessi Afrane the weaver belonged to that lineage, or bore the name through other ancestry, is one of the questions this profile cannot yet answer. It is, however, a question worth asking.

    An Open Record

    Ashanti chieftaincy keeps succession records. The Manhyia Palace archives in Kumasi maintain documentation of traditional title holders. The weaving communities of Bonwire and Adanwomase carry long oral memories. Descendants, apprentices, or contemporaries of a chief weaver active in 1980 are, in all likelihood, still reachable.

    This profile is offered not as a closed account, but as an opening. If you know who Nana Akwessi Afrane was, if you are his descendant, his student, or simply someone who holds a piece of his story, Kente Registry wants to hear from you.

    His cloth is in London. His name deserves to be here.

    Known Details

    • Active circa 1980
    • Held the title of chief weaver of Asante
    • Sold kente cloth to the British Museum in 1981 (accession numbers Af1981,26 and Af1981,27)
    • Cotton strip weaver
    • Production attributed to Ghana
    • Further biographical details unknown

    Sources: British Museum Collection Online, accession records Af1981,26.4 and related entries.

    Do you have information about Nana Akwessi Afrane? Contact Kente Registry →

  • Susudua Kente Prestige Cloth

    Susudua Kente Prestige Cloth

    Cloth Profile KR-D-2026-15048
    Cloth Name
    Susudua — “Measuring Stick”
    Registry No.
    KR-D-2026-15048
    Origin
    Bonwire, Ashanti Region, Ghana
    Weaver
    Unknown · Research in progress
    Pattern Family
    Prestige cloths
    Signature Pattern
    Susudua (measuring-stick)
    Typical Use
    Worn by all · Ceremonial and everyday
    First Recorded
    Early to mid-20th century
    Holding Institution
    Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
    Accession Year
    1969
    Department
    Textiles
    Provenance
    Research in Progress

    Provenance

    The weaver’s identity is undocumented. The cloth is held by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where it was acquired in 1969 and photographed by the museum in 2013. It is dated early to mid-20th century. The medium is viscose rayon, hand-loomed in plain weave with discontinuous supplementary weft patterning.

    Beyond these facts from Cooper Hewitt’s accession record, attribution remains open. The cloth almost certainly originates from the artisan community in Bonwire that has long woven in service to the Asante royal court, but no individual weaver has been identified. Kente Registry welcomes additional documentation from researchers, descendants of Bonwire weavers, and cultural historians who may help illuminate this cloth’s origins.

    The Susudua pattern

    The name carries its own technical instruction. Susudua is the Akan word for the measuring stick the weaver uses to align each pattern block. The cloth is woven in continuous narrow strips that are later cut and sewn together; without careful alignment the checkerboard design would not meet across the seams. The pattern is named for the tool that makes it possible.

    Cooper Hewitt’s accession record, drawing on Malika Kraamer’s scholarship in African Arts (Kraamer, “Ghanaian Interweaving in the Nineteenth Century: A New Perspective on Ewe and Asante Textile History,” African Arts 39, no. 4), describes the cloth as composed of three patterning systems working together: a balanced-weave check that forms the structural base, weft-faced stripes that provide secondary patterning, and supplementary weft zigzags that produce the small geometric motifs within each block. The interplay of these three systems is what distinguishes Susudua from simpler kente compositions.

    What the photograph shows

    Susudua (Measuring Stick) kente cloth, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
    Susudua (measuring-stick) kente cloth. Photograph by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2013.

    The cloth presents a checkerboard of rectangular blocks in warm golden-brown and rust tones, with red-orange and olive-green supplementary weft accents. Each block contains a small zigzag or diamond motif. The blocks sit on a vertically striped background, the balanced-weave check, and are framed at top and bottom by bold horizontal borders in the same warm palette.

    The viscose rayon medium gives the cloth a subtle sheen visible in the museum’s photograph, distinguishing it from earlier plant-fibre kentes while preserving the visual richness expected of a prestige cloth.

    Research in progress

    Several questions remain open and the registry continues to research them.

    The weaver. No individual attribution exists. Workshop attribution within Bonwire’s artisan community would also be informative if the cloth can be linked to a specific weaving lineage.

    Dating. Cooper Hewitt dates the cloth to the early to mid-20th century. Material analysis or comparison with dated examples might narrow this range further.

    Donor and acquisition pathway. The cloth was acquired by Cooper Hewitt in 1969. A donor name has appeared in earlier draft documentation of this record but has not yet been verified against Cooper Hewitt’s published accession data and is omitted here pending confirmation. Researchers with access to Cooper Hewitt’s donor records are invited to assist.

    Contributions of oral history, archival material, or scholarly analysis bearing on any of these questions are welcomed at the registry.