wall hanging depicting village life, Pope-Ellis School of Weaving

Unlike the iconic strip-woven kente cloth commonly associated with African weaving, this particular wall hanging is a tapestry with figurative imagery. Set on an off-white warp, the wall hanging depicts a rural setting of villagers at work: carrying materials, doing laundry, and wading in the river. Each moment is separate from the next, all existing freely in space against the cream-colored background. This style can be traced back to a weaving school founded by Marjorie Pope-Ellis just outside of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Pope-Ellis opened her school to provide girls with the opportunity to learn technical skills and complete commissioned works of art. The Pope-Ellis School of Weaving, founded around the 1930s, is similar to other art schools that opened in South Africa around the same time. Sites like Rorke's Drift Art and Craft Centre and the Grace Dieu School employed European instructors and combined European techniques with African-inspired imagery in an attempt to “foster pride and heritage.” The tapestries produced at Pope-Ellis are recognizable for their use of cream-colored backgrounds, unlike other South African tapestries whose geometric patterns went to the edge of their compositions. Works from the Pope-Ellis School of Weaving still incorporated geometric forms and flat colors, but depicted more pictorial images of livestock and people rather than abstract shapes and patterns. Written by Rin Scholtens