Kuba Shoowa Prestige Panel

Most patterns obey. This one does as it pleases.

It is a 20th-century raffia panel from the Shoowa, a group within the Kuba kingdom of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Shoowa women are celebrated for their dense cut-pile embroidery, raffia threads drawn through a woven ground and trimmed into a velvety surface.

Here the design shifts with real freedom. Rows of stacked diamonds with dark brown centers on one side. Across the rest, a maze of interlocking key-shaped meanders and concentric lozenges. A broad dark band cuts diagonally across the upper corner, and scattered dark motifs break the rhythm. Nineteen by twenty-six and a half inches.

Jazz, in raffia.