Historic Handweaving in Highland Madagascar: New Insights from a Vernacular Text Attributed to a Royal Diviner-Healer, c. 1870

Abstract

In comparison to the western half of the continent, East Africa’s long and rich textile history has received less attention in the literature. A wave of new scholarship is beginning to redress the balance. A number of works focus on the island of Madagascar, one of the region’s oldest and most important historic centres of cloth production. Drawing special interest are the Merina weavers of the central highlands who, from at least the eighteenth century, were among the island’s most prolific and innovative cloth makers. This article introduces a key Merina-authored text — thus far overlooked by scholars — with novel insights into historic highland handweaving. Entitled Things for Making Cloth, it forms part of a larger work known as the ‘Ombiasy Manuscript’ written in 1870, reputedly by a healer to the royal Merina court. In providing a first translation and commentary, this essay draws on museum specimens and field interviews to reveal fully the text’s unique information on spinning, dyeing, weaving, decorative techniques and, above all, indigenous conceptions of cloth creation and patterning, some of which challenge conventional western understandings of Merina textile types.

For their help with various questions of translation, I gratefully acknowledge Narivelo Rajaonarimanana, Mirana Abraham Andriamanantena, Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo, Bako Rasoarifetra and Noël J. Gueunier. As always, Professeur Gueunier pointed out interesting angles and bibliographic sources. Edgar Krebs, Alexandra Palmer, Adrienne Hood, Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers and the anonymous reviewers offered highly constructive comments on earlier drafts of this work. For their financial support, I thank the Département de Recherche, Musée du Quai Branly, and the Foundation Peer Review Fund of the Royal Ontario Museum.

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Notes on contributors

Sarah Fee

Dr Sarah Fee is Associate Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Textiles and Costume at the Royal Ontario Museum. She holds degrees in anthropology and African studies from Oxford University and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris. She has been researching the making and social meanings of cloth in Madagascar for over twenty years. She co-edited Objects as Envoys. Cloth, Imagery and Diplomacy in Madagascar (Washington, DC, and Seattle: Smithsonian Institution and University of Washington Press, 2002).