Baule Woman's Wrap / Skirt

Indigo, cream, and a lighter blue. Baule weavers kept the palette short.

They worked cotton on narrow looms, often dyeing it with indigo, and sewed the strips together into wrappers worn by women. This one, from the Ivory Coast, dates to the 20th century and measures forty-one by fifty-four inches.

It is striped across its width in deep indigo, cream, gray-blue and lighter blue, with fine accent lines in the narrower bands. The handspun cotton has a soft, slightly irregular texture, and the colors have mellowed evenly with age.

Calm, rhythmic, and quietly sure of itself.