The colony · 1787–1895
What hands made: country cloth spun and woven on the narrow loom, gara dyeing, baskets, pots, carving and smithing.
Many were made by colonial officials, missionaries and foreign visitors. Titles and descriptions come from the collections that hold them and can carry the attitudes and language of their time. We show them as historical records, not as endorsements. Dates, eras and categories were assigned automatically from those records and some will be wrong. If you or your family appear in a picture, you hold rights to one, a detail is wrong, or you think a picture should not be here, press “Report this picture” under it: your note reaches our editors with the picture attached, and they can take it down straight away. You can also write to hello@dt-ets.com.
Cloth sample, collected before 1800 1796
Original title: Fabric test
Public domain (CC0) · Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm · Source ↗ · Report this picture
Interior Hanging (Mende, Vai, or Temne peoples) early–mid-19th century
Mende, Vai, or Temne artist · Public domain (CC0) · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Source ↗ · Report this picture
Mrs. Kate Roachof Sierra Leone. 1880–93
(artist not separately acknowledged) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · Source ↗ · Report this picture
The "Senior Service" of Sierra Leone, 1885 1885
Colonial Records Office · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · Source ↗ · Report this picture
Cloth samples, from Afzelius's journey of the 1790s Collected 1792–96
Original title: Test
Public domain (CC0) · Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm · Source ↗ · Report this picture