Bogolanfini Mud Cloth
Bogolanfini, the mud cloth of the Bamana of Mali, is a cotton textile painted by women with a dye of fermented river mud, worked over a yellow ground to leave dark geometric patterns that record proverbs, clan histories and the teachings of initiation. The cloth is made in a slow sequence: the cotton is washed and dyed with a yellow infusion of leaves, then the designs are drawn in mud, which reacts with the yellow to leave a deep brown-black as the background is rinsed away. The cloths were worn at initiations, by hunters, and by women at the turning points of life, and the patterns are held