Kanga (Swahili Message Cloth)

• Design one cloth, not yardage: a landscape rectangle about 150 by 110 cm with a wide, continuous border (pindo) on all four sides around a central field (mji).
• Fill the border with a close repeat of one or two motifs (cashew-shaped paisley, flowers, vines, diamonds or stripes) and close the cloth with a plain dark edge band.
• Put one centred motif in the field (a sofa, a ship, a fruit, a medallion or a portrait) and mirror the layout about the vertical axis, with matching motifs in the corners; or fill the field with an even repeat of dots or small figures.
• Set one short saying (the jina: a Swahili proverb, riddle, blessing or barb) in plain capitals inside a ruled box or ribbon at the lower centre of the field, so the cloth can be read like a sign.
• Print flat, opaque colour in a few inks, a black or navy key with one to three saturated colours such as marigold, red, green or sky blue, with no shading, gradients or texture, except the screened photo portrait in a commemorative medallion.
• For a commemoration or campaign, swap the motif for a portrait medallion, flag, emblem or date, and let the saying congratulate, thank or urge.

Swahili coast of East Africa, chiefly Zanzibar and Mombasa, where coastal traders commissioned the designs; printed in Europe, India and Japan until the mid-20th century, and after independence, above all from the 1970s, also in Kenyan and Tanzanian mills

1. Wikipedia: Kanga (African garment) (about 150 by 110 cm, sold in pairs; pindo, mji and jina; Kaderdina Hajee Essak's 'K.H.E. – Mali ya Abdulla' kangas with Swahili proverbs; inscriptions first in Arabic script, later in Roman letters; printed mainly in India, the Far East and Europe until the mid-20th century; today made by mills such as MeTL (Tanzania), Rivatex and Thika Cloth Mills (Kenya); political kangas): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanga_(African_garment)
2. National Museums of Kenya, 'Kanga: A Cloth That Unites', curated by Philemon Nyamanga, on Google Arts & Culture (earliest designs block printed; produced largely in Europe and India, with British, American, Dutch and Japanese imports dominating through the 20th century; textile mills set up in Kenya in the 1970s; Tanzania one of the largest producers by 1985): https://artsandculture.google.com/story/UQXRRgiEQNcJLA
3. MacKenzie Moon Ryan, 'Kanga Textile Design, Education, and Production in contemporary Dar es Salaam, Tanzania', Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings (2016), abstract (introduction in 1886; worn from southern Somalia to Mozambique; birth, initiation, brides' kitchen parties and burial uses; Obama kangas of 2008 and 2013; the standard composition of mji, pindo and jina): https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/1002
4. MacKenzie Moon Ryan, 'Converging Trades and New Technologies: The Emergence of Kanga Textiles on the Swahili Coast in the Late Nineteenth Century', in Pedro Machado, Sarah Fee and Gwyn Campbell (eds), Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures, and the Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), as summarised by Things That Talk, Leiden University (Portuguese leso handkerchiefs sewn together; European printers answering with large rectangular cloths): https://thingsthattalk.net/nl/t/ttt:TNakjG/m/the-swahili-cloth/details
5. Caroline Stone, 'Kangas', Textile Research Centre Leiden blog (2021) (earliest kangas woodblock printed, then soon produced industrially; many early to mid-20th-century kangas made in Japan; UK imports usually in two colours, ending in the 1950s; early Swahili phrases in Arabic script; border, phrase and large central motif; fruit, flowers and paisley shaped like a mango or a cashew): https://www.trc-leiden.nl/trc/index.php/en/blog/1186-kangas-by-caroline-stone
6. Houston Community College, HCC Fashion Archive, 'Multicolored Cotton Kanga', Tanzania, 2000–2009 (donor note: 'Tanzanian hand screen printed red, gold, black and white Kanga'): https://hccfashion.omeka.net/items/show/436
7. Marije Boerma, 'The kisutu: the longest living kanga and its deadly origin story', Textile Research Centre Leiden blog (2024) (central field framed by a border; the jina at the bottom; a kanga without text called kanga bubu; cloths named after their motif; the kisutu, perhaps the oldest type of kanga, black speckled with red and white hearts, crosses and dots, worn by brides, in green or blue for a second or third marriage, with or without a text): https://trc-leiden.nl/trc/index.php/en/blog/1626-the-kisutu-the-longest-living-kanga-and-its-deadly-origin-story
8. Art Institute of Chicago, kanga records read through api.artic.edu, with inscriptions, translations and curatorial texts: 2022.1491 (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/262765), 2022.1490 by Kassamali Gulamhussein (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/262762), 2022.1488 (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/262764), 2022.1489 (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/262763; its 'my children' corrected to the singular, since mwanangu is 'my child', Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mwanangu), 2024.313 (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/269179)
9. Victoria and Albert Museum, Ziddi Msangi kangas T.39-2023, T.40-2023 and T.41-2023, records read through api.vam.ac.uk ('Printed cotton, designed and made by Ziddi Msangi in the United States'; e.g. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1743711/)
10. Bard College, Textiles That Talk: East African Kangas and Their Meanings (inscriptions addressed to spouses, rivals or the public; proverbs, political slogans and public information; Kawira Mwirichia's LGBTQ kanga designs): https://eh.bard.edu/projects/textiles-that-talk-east-african-kangas-and-their-meanings/

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