LOT 6 — A pair of Velours du Kasaï

West-Congo, ca. 1900, 60 × 60 cm (each)
The pair comes framed in two oak-frames
OPENING BID € 2,000
Donated by Lin Deletaille

Velours du Kasaï, or Kasai velvet, is a kind of textile made in Kasai, a province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The textiles are traditionally woven by the men of Shoowa, a Kuba ethnic group, and embroidered by women. The fabric is made of very fine fibres from inside the leaves of young palm trees. The leaves are dried in the sun, then split lengthways and connected to form a basic warp of raffia between two and four metres long. Fine leaf fibres are then interwoven in a woof to achieve the velvet effect. The designs are very varied and created spontaneously but normally follow the body scarification patterns of the Kuba. Whilst the technique is still practised today, these two Kasai velvets were made around the turn of the 20th century.