How to Buy Kente Cloth

The best place to buy Kente Cloth is directly from Ghana. When buying Kente cloth, make sure that it is hand woven from individual threads. Often you will see what appears to be Kente cloth, but they are actually prints. This is not “Kente” but rather an imitation and does not carry the same value and prestige. An easy way of determining if the Kente is authentic is by seeing if the color on one side of the fabric is consistent with the color directly opposite that section of fabric. Real kente cloth is handwoven so the thread will be consistent on the opposite side. Imitation kente cloth is printed on the cloth so the opposite side may show a different color, which is impossible in handwoven cloth.

We have kente imported directly from Ghana and available for sale. Due to the unique nature and amount of work involved in creating Kente, these cloths are in limited quantities. Check Our Shop page to buy Kente Graduation Stoles before they sell out. You can also watch a video of one of our Master Weavers weaving a kente cloth.

from-china-kente-comparison-1-640x480 How to Buy Kente Cloth
More information on Kente:

Kente clothes are available in countless colors and umpteen numbers of designs. It is astonishing and unbelievable that each and every color and design have special meaning and implication. The skillful combinations of colors and designs are real feasts to the eyes and provide soothing satisfaction to the mind.

Kente is a fabric local to Ghana and nearby West African countries. It is believed that Kente cloth was inspired by the weaving pattern of a spider. The spider weaves its web and is known locally as ‘nwentoma.’ The magnificent colors make the Kente extremely special. The way the fabric is woven is simply marvelous. The fabric is hand-woven in four inches wide strips. It would take almost a day to weave just one strip. These strips are then woven together to make bigger pieces of cloth. The cloth is filled with various colors and designs.

Kente cloth is completely a product of handicraft. No machine is involved. As such, it is labor intensive. A lot of special skill is essential to make it. Because of these features, Kente cloth was traditionally reserved for royal family members. It was generally worn by kings and queens in Ghana and is reserved for special occasions and ceremonies.

All colors have places in Kente clothes. Blue stands for peace, love and harmony. Green signifies growth, harvest and vegetation. Yellow denotes prosperity, royalty and richness. Red is indicative of death, mourning and funeral. The designs used in Kente clothes are even more meaningful and significant. Forgiveness, tolerance, patience, harmony in variety, responsibility, hard work, progress, dependency on God and power of the people are a few among a number of implications of various designs used.

You may visit Our Shop page for further details and place orders. Online shopping guarantees best quality and lowest possible cost. 

Kente Cloth Weaving

The kente cloth is woven on a narrow horizontal wood structure called a loom. A heddle is an integral part of a loom. Each thread in the warp passes through a heddle, which is used to separate the warp threads for the passage of the weft. The typical heddle is made of cord or wire, and is suspended on a shaft of a loom. Each heddle has an eye in the center where the warp is threaded through. As there is one heddle for each thread of the warp, there can be near a thousand heddles used for fine or wide warps. A handwoven tea-towel will generally have between 300 and 400 warp threads, and thus use that many heddles.
In weaving, the warp threads are moved up or down by the shaft. This is achieved because each thread of the warp goes through a heddle on a shaft. When the shaft is raised the heddles are too, and thus the warp threads threaded through the heddles are raised. Heddles can be either equally or unequally distributed on the shafts, depending on the pattern to be woven.  In a plain weave or twill, for example, the heddles are equally distributed.

Pictured below is Kente being woven in the traditional way.

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kente cloth weaving

The warp is threaded through heddles on different shafts in order to obtain different weave structures. For a plain weave on a loom with two shafts, for example, the first thread would go through the first heddle on the first shaft, and then the next thread through the first heddle on the second shaft. The third warp thread would be threaded through the second heddle on the first shaft, and so on. In this manner the heddles allow for the grouping of the warp threads into two groups, one group that is threaded through heddles on the first shaft, and the other on the second shaft.
The Kente loom usually uses four heddles (asanan), but in special cases, six or seven heddles (asasia) may be used.

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Kente Weaving close-up shot

The cloth is woven in narrow strip (called ntomaban or bankuo) that is about 3-5 inches wide and about 5-6 feet long. Several strips are sewn together to make a wider piece of cloth for both men and women. A man’s cloth may contain up to 24 strips and measure about 5×8 feet. The woman’s two-piece cloth may contain 8-12 strips each piece.

Traditionally Kente is woven from silk however Kente woven from other threads such as rayon is just as authentic. The most important part of creating kente is the weaving technique used, colors chosen, patterns used and the skill of the artist.

Video of Kente Cloth being woven:

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