SchoolArts - April 2007

Middle School Studio Lesson

Ar t

Patricia Huntington

from the Earth

Mali, West Africa, holds many visual treasures for the traveler willing to forfeit the conveniences of modern society and slip into the traditional world of the Bambara people. One such treasure is Bogolan cloth, a traditional textile made with bold geometrical patterns dyed with black mud, brown tree bark, and bleach. I visited a Bogolan workshop in Segou, Mali and learned traditional methods of mud cloth production.

The Legend
Legend says that a hunter shot some
game, which fell into a river. The
hunter retrieved his game and found
his tunic stained black. His wife
diligently tried to clean the stains,
but the black dye was permanent.
Based on this legend, women began
to use the tannic acid in the mud to
add geomet-
rical designs
to cot-
ton cloth.
Eventually,
the cloths
became sto-
ryboards for
moral lessons, such as following a
straight and honest path, or honor-
ing family and community.

Students apply red mud to fabric.

The Traditional Process

Mud cloth production starts with white strips of cotton fabric that are sewn together to form a large rectangle. The white cloth is then dyed

in a bath

A Bogolan cloth made by the of pounded
Bambara people of Mali is a ^leavestextile made with bold geometrical ^from ^theN’galema
patterns dyed with black mud, _tree, _whichbrown tree bark, and bleach. saturates
the cloth
with a yellow ochre color. Geo-
metrical designs are lightly marked
on the fabric, and color is applied
to individual sections. Black comes

from river mud, and red ochre is made from soaked bark of the Picu tree. White is the last color, created by bleaching sections of the yellow ochre cloth. The final result is a graphic display of geometrical patterns that show strong contrast and balance.

Adaptations for Classroom Use This project worked successfully in middle school and grades four through six. Ideally there is one class for planning the design, then a class for each of the colors (black, brown, and white)

Traditional African mud cloth from Mali.

1. Dye fabric. Hot water is reco-mended, but I have done this successfully in the classroom with warm tap water and double the suggested amount of dye.