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Textile Ascendancies: Aesthetics, Production, and Trade in Northern Nigeria
Elisha P. Renne and Salihu Maiwada, Editors
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Until this century, Northern Nigeria was a major center of textile production and trade. Textile Ascendancies: Aesthetics, Production, and Trade in Northern Nigeria examines this dramatic change in textile aesthetics, technologies, and social values in order to explain the extraordinary shift in textile demand, production, and trade.
Textile Ascendancies provides information for the study of the demise of textile manufacturing outside Nigeria. The book also suggests the conundrum considered by George Orwell concerning the benefits and disadvantages of "mechanical progress," and digital progress, for human existence. While textile mill workers in northern Nigeria were proud to participate in the mechanization of weaving, the "tendency for the mechanization of the world" represented by more efficient looms and printing equipment in China has contributed to the closing of Nigerian mills and unemployment.
Textile Ascendancies will appeal toanthropologists for its analyses of social identity as well as how the ethnic identity of consumers influences continued handwoven textile production. The consideration of aesthetics and fashionable dress will appeal to specialists in textiles and clothing. It will be useful to economic historians for the comparative analysis of textile manufacturing decline in the 21st century. It will also be of interest to those thinking about global futures, about digitalization, and how new ways of making cloth and clothing may provide both employment and environmentally sound production practices.
Fig. 8.1. ABC cotton print textile referred to as Leaves, with the phrase “Guaranteed English Wax” printed on the margin. This cloth is owned by Hajiya Amina, Tudun Wada, Kaduna. (Photograph by E. P. Renne, November 24, 2017.)
An example of cloth known as yar da atamfa (“throw-away” print cloth) in Kano and roba-roba (rubber-rubber) in Zaria. The cloth made in China that sold for N1,300 in Zaria City market in January 2017. It has a heavy rubbery hand and is very shiny. This cloth is also an example of manufactured cloths which are made to imitate the appearance of handwoven strip textiles (photograph by E. Renne).
Imitation Vlisco cloth for sale in shop in Zaria, selling for N5,000 for six yards. Despite the label’s claim, this cloth was manufactured in China. The intentional mis-spelling, Vlisco, suggests the company’s attempt to avoid a copyright suit, Tudun Wada, Zaria, November 2017 (photograph by E. Renne).
Detail of luru zubwa handwoven blanket, made with handspun natural and indigo-dyed cotton thread, consisting of nine 6” handwoven strips which have been handsewn together; the width of these strips suggest that the cloth was woven in a village near Kano (Lamb and Holmes 1980: 109). The triangular shapes are called aska, (knives). Purchased in Kurmi Market, Kano, December 1994 (photograph by E. Renne).
Blanket being woven at the Northern Textiles Manufacturers—NTM (Gidan Bargo), Bompai Industrial Area, Kano, 29 October 1966 (photograph by Francis Uher, courtesy of the Ministry of Information, Kaduna).
Smart phone with image of the Kano-based trader, Alhaji Shafi’u Abdulkadir, showing the type of acrylic blanket to be ordered from a Chinese blanket manufacturer in Baoding by his Chinese broker, Guangzhou, December 2014 (photograph by E.P. Renne).
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