Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Nobody drew the grid. The hand drew it, and the hand wandered.

The Kuba peoples of the Democratic Republic of Congo made this Shoowa panel in the 20th century. The Shoowa are celebrated for such work, in which women stitched improvised geometric designs into cloth woven by men.

Broad tan bands interlace across the field, knotting into lozenges that each frame four black squares, while smaller black diamonds and triangles fill the gaps and edges. Slight shifts in the drawing reveal the hand of the maker. A plain woven border finishes it, twenty-one by twenty-two and a half inches.

Perfection is for machines.