Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)

• Cut every figure as a flat silhouette in one colour of cotton and sew it onto a plain single-colour ground, adding eyes, scales, weapons or dress in embroidery or small appliquéd pieces, never in shading.
• Put a national flag in the upper hoist corner as a canton, freely pieced from patches of cloth: the Union Jack under colonial rule, the flag of Ghana after 1957.
• Stage one proverb, boast or taunt as a single scene (a beast seizing its prey, a crocodile over a pond of fish, a leader with his weapon and stool) and make the strongest figure the largest, floating on the ground with no horizon or perspective; animals such as crocodiles are often drawn in composite perspective, the body seen from above and the head in profile.
• Close the free edges with a border of contrasting squares or triangles, and often name the company by its number in stitched capitals or numerals.
• Sew the design on both faces of the cloth so it reads from either side when the flag is danced, carried in procession or hung around the company shrine.
• Take foreign emblems and remake them as signs of local proverbs: the griffin, borrowed from English imagery, and the many-headed dragon that Fante artists now often prefer in its place, a monster probably inspired by the mythical creatures of European heraldry.

Fante towns of Ghana's central coast, among them Elmina, Cape Coast, Anomabo, Saltpond and Kormantine, where flag-makers' family workshops sew the flags for the asafo companies

1. Courtnay Micots, 'Griffins, Crocodiles, and the British Ensign: Kweku Kakanu's Asafo Flags and Followers', in Susan Cooksey, ed., Africa Interweave: Textile Diasporas (Gainesville: Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, 2011), pp. 142–144 (a painted flag reported in 1693, but flags widely adopted by the asafo only in the mid-nineteenth century; the British ensign added in the upper corner in the colonial period and replaced by the Ghanaian flag at independence in 1957; the British administration imposed strict regulations on asafo companies and their arts; flags about 3 by 5 feet, coloured cloth sewn to a typically monochromatic cotton ground with embroidered details; the cloth and many of the motifs imported; griffins borrowed from English mythical imagery, the Fante now preferring a multiheaded dragon in place of the griffin in many of their arts; the crocodile drawn in composite perspective, body from above and head in profile; Kweku Kakanu, b. 1910, worked in Saltpond; the Harn crocodile flag's crocodile, fish and border do not match Kakanu's patterns, both Harn flags were collected in Accra in 1993, and the crocodile flag likely came from a contemporary workshop; Ross has identified eight workshops and record production for sale since the mid-1990s, including new flags with the British ensign mimicking pre-independence flags): https://cssah.famu.edu/departments-and-centers/visual-arts-humanities-and-theatre/visual-arts/pdf/micots-courtnay-pdfs/Micots%20Courtnay%20-%20Griffins%20Crocodiles%20and%20the%20British%20Ensign%20-%20Harn%20Catalog.pdf
2. Doran H. Ross, Fighting with Art: Appliquéd Flags of the Fante Asafo (Los Angeles: UCLA Museum of Cultural History, 1979), abstract in eHRAF World Cultures, Yale (flags of the exhibition made 1935–1978; earliest record of company flags in Ghana around 1600; companies extremely competitive, flags provocative declarations of courage and prowess; most flags refer to well-known proverbs): https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/cultures/fe12/documents/046
3. Doran H. Ross, 'First Word: True Colours, Faux Flags, and Tattered Sales', African Arts 43, no. 2 (2010): 1–7 (as cited and summarised by Micots)
4. Peter Adler and Nicholas Barnard, Asafo! African Flags of the Fante (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992) (cited by Micots and by TRC Leiden)
5. The Textile Museum, George Washington University, collection story on Asafo flag 1999.39.1 (flag-makers usually men in family workshops; a new leader commissions and helps design a new flag; appliqué on both sides of cotton trade cloth with embroidered details; a simplified Union Jack before independence and the flag of Ghana after 1957; motifs for proverbs, maxims, jokes, warnings, insults and folktales; still used in parades, dances, festivals and to decorate the company shrine): https://collectionstories.museum.gwu.edu/?p=3988
6. Textile Research Centre Leiden, 'Asafo Appliqués' (a form of the Union Jack in one corner from 1874 to 1957; locally designed and produced; geometric, often checked, patterns with people, animals, boats and plants; each company with its own number; British Museum Af1978,22.724): https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/regional-traditions/sub-saharan-africa/asafo-appliques
7. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Asafo flag (Frakaa), 1940s, 2013.59.1: https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/61023/asafo-flag
8. Brooklyn Museum, Asafo Company Flag (Frankaa), early to mid-20th century, 2009.39.2: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/188918
9. Brooklyn Museum, Asafo Company Flag (Frankaa), early to mid-20th century, 2009.39.1 (a three-headed winged monster over a decapitated corpse on a black field, a patchwork Union Jack canton, a border of red and beige triangles; 'The three-headed monster here was probably inspired by the mythical creatures of European heraldry'): https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/objects/188917
10. Wikimedia Commons, 'Asafo Flag, No. 2 Company; created by Akwa Osei; Ghana, Fante people; c. 1900', Honolulu Museum of Art 5886.1 (Kormantine): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asafo_Flag,_No._2_Company;_created_by_Akwa_Osei;_Ghana,_Fante_people;_c._1900,_Cotton_and_rayon,_embroidery_and_appliqu%C3%A9.jpg
11. Museum Natur und Mensch, Museen Freiburg, Appliquéd Battalion Flag Asafo (Frankaa), I/2622, text by Doris Kubisch, via Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek: https://ccc.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/en/item/VLNXA2IO7D2CNJPZLVZXLTDY2IGL35N7
12. Wikipedia: Asafo (each company headed by a tufohen with its own flag; the ten companies of Elmina): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafo
13. Wikipedia: Asafo Flags (Akan proverbs combined with European heraldic tradition; flags hung around the posuban shrine and carried at annual festivals and members' funerals; collected abroad since the 1990s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafo_Flags
14. Flags of the World, 'Asafo flags (Ghana)' (canton variants, borders of contrasting squares or triangles, company numbers in the field; the 'Crocodiles and moon' flag: a pink field with a wide golden-yellow cross, 'NºI' in red on its bottom arm, and crocodiles seen from above): https://crwflags.com/FOTW/flags/gh_asaf1.html

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