Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Chocolate-brown ground. Cream diamonds, concentric and neatly outlined. At the center of each, a small checkerboard of black squares.

Shoowa women are celebrated for embroidering raffia cloth with dense cut-pile designs that resemble velvet. This prestige panel from the Kuba peoples of the Democratic Republic of Congo dates to the 20th century. Such panels were exchanged as gifts, kept as wealth and used on important occasions. Slight variations from diamond to diamond show the hand of the maker. A plain band of natural raffia binds the edges of the nearly square panel, twenty-one by twenty-three inches.

The diamonds agree, more or less. That is how you know a person made them.