Home of kente cloth
Bonwire
A weaving village near Kumasi where narrow strips of kente are woven in gold, green, red and black.
Why Bonwire is kente gold
Bonwire is a town in the Ashanti region of Ghana, a short drive from Kumasi. It is the best-known centre of kente, the ceremonial cloth of the Asante people. Kente is woven by men on narrow looms in strips about ten centimetres wide, which are then sewn edge to edge. Blocks of pattern alternate along each strip, so the finished cloth looks like a basket weave of colour. A legend says two men of Bonwire learned the craft by watching a spider spin its web. Colours carry meanings that weavers often explain: gold for wealth and royalty, green for growth, red for blood and sacrifice, black for maturity and the ancestors. Each pattern has a name.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Bonwire
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Bonwire" on Wikipedia. If you know Bonwire and we have it wrong, tell us.
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The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jaisalmer In: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, source
- Amritsar In: Traveltoindia23, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Jerusalem Il: askii, CC BY-SA 2.0, source
- Jamestown Gh: Fkoku, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Hobart Au: Michael fromholtz, CC BY-SA 4.0, source