Kumasi's Craft Villages

Kumasi's Craft Villages

Outside of Kumasi are craft villages, which show how some the traditional Ghanian workshops operate. Frank, a friend of Jeff and Tini, took us to some of the villages to see what goes on.

Wood Carving
 
First stop was wood carving. When I heard the words "craft village" my mind conjured up probably what yours is doing now - driving along a dusty road, palm trees on the side, maybe a dog or two, stepping out of the car and walking toward the proverbial mud and thatch-roofed houses. Well, that was not the case with the wood carving village. 

It's actually a series of stalls next to or across a busy street from each other. What this particular workshop we stopped at had above the others was a sense of calm and selflessness. By that I mean that the men in the workshop didn't have an agenda to get us to buy something. 

Nana Frimpong Boadu and Frank, our guide

The master carver, Nana Frimpong, casually explained the meaning of the masks and figures for us, when we asked.

  




 










He had an assistant who was more available, but definitely not as knowledgeable as Nana Frimpong. 












     The electricity was out, so the assistant was kind enough to find flashlights for us to use.




 







We spent a good long time exploring his shop and learning more about the pieces. 











Our goal was to find a something that was original and one of a kind, not a copy of a copy of a . . .

During one of Nana's stories, we found out that he is the Chief Carver of Otumfoa Osel Tutu II - the current Ashanti King. Wow. We came to the right shop.




 




We were successful! The mask we bought was something he carved over 40 years ago, definitely one of a kind. There were so many pieces to choose from. Also, when Nana Frimpong heard we would not be able to come back to his shop again, he had his assistant go back in and get us a couple unfinished pieces. They are fertility dolls!




Adinkra Printing

After purchasing some freshly cooked plantains from a local vender, we were off to the next village, Ntonso, to experience first-hand how adinkra prints are made.

I highly recommend that you check out this website about the entire process. It explains much better than I can, all of the steps the go into making a finished piece. The place in the website is where we went.

http://iweb.tntech.edu/cventura/adinkra.htm

Here's what I can show you, but really, you should go to the site.

 




This is the tree from which the inner bark is used to make the ink for printing.

The inner bark is soaked for a long time and then pounded in a mortar.

The bark is soaked in water and then boiled for many hours before the inky-type qualities come through.

To make our sample adinkra print, the guide set out many different print blocks, with each block having a different meaning. It was hard to choose just three, but that was the limit, he said. Any more than that and the message gets confusing.

These are some smaller print blocks. They are carved from treated calabash gourds. 

Here's the heated ink and an example of a calabash, untreated.

   

I got to try out the printing process. It's a little difficult to know how long to keep the inked stamp on the fabric.

One of the cloths used for printing on is kente cloth. Here is part of the set-up for a kente cloth loom.

Here is the loom itself. Pretty cool, eh

Tini gets to try, now. The symbol with a star in the center is one they are contemplating using for their Project Peanut Butter logo here in Ghana.













I hope you take the opportunity to learn more about the adrinka printing process. It was very interesting and informative for us. I really enjoyed taking part in part of the print-making.