Mae Festa 50 Years of Collecting Textiles - Peter Pap Oriental Rugs

AFRICA – Sub-Sahara
Woman’s Cache Fesse (Pikuran)
(above)
Mid-20 th Century
Kirdi People, Northern Cameroon
Polychrome glass beads woven with brown
cotton yarn into a rectangular panel.
25 pairs of 3 blue beads guide the warp
threads to the cowries to form a fringe.
43.2 x 16 cm 17 x 6¼ in
fringe: 5.3 cm 2 3/ 8 in
Mistakenly referred to as “cache sexes,” these
rectangular, loom-woven, beaded articles of clothing
are actually “cache fesses,” to lie across the derrière.
The cotton attachments are tied at the hips with the
true cache sexe. The arrival of tiny European glass
beads during the 19 th century afforded the Kirdi the
opportunity to create these wonderful costume pieces.
360
Man’s Cache Sexe/Aprons
Mid-20 th Century
Fali, Cameroon Grassfields
Fine, homespun indigo cotton strip cloth,
5 cm (2 in) wide, ten strips across, stabilized
by natural cotton embroidery, and by a heavier
1 in strip across the top and sides. Attached
handworked cotton fringe.
left: 53 x 43 cm 21 x 17 in (with fringe)
right: 57.1 x 47.1 cm 22½ x 18 in (with fringe)
left: The seven attached aluminum two-franc coins of
Afrique Equatoriale Française are all dated 1948,
whereas the 10 and 25 centimes coins that serve for
attachment are dated 1913 and 1924 respectively.
The two-franc coins are reverse up, showing an
antelope. The degree of attention lavished on this
and the companion piece suggests that they were worn
for ceremonial purposes and prized by their owners.
right: In this piece, only three of the two-franc
aluminum coins are used, but a total of forty-seven
old plastic buttons are applied, in two rows of seven
to either side, and thiry-three down the middle.
Although the embroidery is less elaborate than on the
first example, it is more dense over the edge bands,
and the fringe is more than double the density.