MUDCLOTH or BOGOLAN FINI of MALI

BEHIND THE SCENES ADVENTURES trips visit many mudcloth artists and cloth dyers; check out the next trip at www.btsadventures.com.

This boldly patterned, hand-painted fabric that we call mudcloth, is called bogolan fini in Bambara. "Bogo" means earthen clay or mud in the Bambara language, so bogolan fini means “clay/mud applied to cloth.”  Bogolan fini is considered a typically Malian tradition, but garments made from this fabric are not worn by Malians today. However, bogolan fini has an important ethno- graphic history among the Bambara people.

Long ago, it is said, the white cloth used for hunters' shirts was dipped into leaf infusions which gave it earthy yellow tones, to better disguise the hunter in the sandy savannah country. The story continues: One of the first hunters to wear a yellowish shirt chased an animal through the mud and his shirt became splashed with dark streaks. When he got home his wife tried and tried to get the stains out, but the mud splatters had thoroughly dyed the shirt in dark brown blotches. She realized that she could purposefully paint stripes and patterns on her husband's shirt to camouglage him among the bushes and trees. Thus began the tradition of bogo-lan-fini among the Bambara people of Mali.

So hunters and shamans traditionally wore loose tunics [collarless shirts] tinted with natural dyes, with or without painted designs.   They also stitched onto the surface little, rectagular, leatherpackets about an inch across, called gris gris [pronounced gree-gree], which give protective powers to the owner. Gris-gris often contain a folded piece of paper with Koranic verses written on it, or some other substances believed to give protection to the wearer. often adding so many that the shirt was covered with protective amulets. Sometimes small mirrors were also stitched on. Some men in remote areas of Mali still wear these shirts. Old women performing excisions used to wrap the girls’ pelvic areas with bands of the cloth, decorated with symbolic and protective patterns, to soak up the blood.

Bogolan fini begins with long bands of white hand-spun cotton about 4 inches wide, woven by men on double-heddle strip looms. The strips are stitched together neatly by hand or with a zig-zag stitch on a treadle sewing machine. The resulting pieces are typically about 4 feet by 7 or 8 feet in size. The cloth is first soaked in an infusion of leaves from the n’galaman tree, which turns it yellow. Three dippings are usual, and ensure that the tannin mixture from the leaves will act as an efficient mordant, fixing the final colors.

The cloth is dried in the hot Malian sun which intensifies the yellow color, and then painted with a mixture of iron-rich liquid clay or mud that has been sitting and fermenting for at least several months. The cloth is again dried to set the designs, and finally the clay is washed out, leaving dark brown-black lines where the paint mixture was applied. To add color tones, some of the cloth may be painted or dyed with an infusion made from the bark and hard seeds of raisin sauvage (called wild grape) that have been pounded in a mortar and heated in water.

If an artist wants areas of the cloth to be white, he or she will paint a mixture of bleach and powdered soap (a brand called Omo, like Tide) onto those areas [above right]. The white Omo mixture is often squeezed out of plastic mustard bottles, as the nozzle tip makes fine details possible.

Nowadays, musical groups [at left] often wear hand-painted mudcloth to add ambiance to their performances. Also some school children in Bamako and other towns wear uniforms sewn from factory-printed, light-cotton patterned with bogolan fini designs. Tourists buy the rest of the bogolan fini produced by modern artists, who interpret designs and use new patterns in their creations. In Bamako, Segou, and San, mudcloth artists now paint large scenes of African life on cloth, and they also create fabric destined for clothing, table runners, pillows, or other home decor. The N'Domo studio, run by a member of the Kasobane group, has begun creating very large and striking abstract designs, using indigo blue tones in addition to the browns and rusts of traditonal bogolanfini. They also mix the indigo with the yellow dye solution to get various tones of greens. For Westerners at least, mudcloth has become a smbol of Mali and Africa.

Click here to  make your own virtual mud cloth! and read more about it, on the website of the Smithsonian Institution. Thanks !