West African Wild Silks Techniques: Preserving Marka-Dafing’s Heritage of Knowledge
Publication Project by Laurence Douny and Salif Sawadogo
Douny, Laurence (2024). Degumming process - cooking the cocoons. The British Museum. Image: https://doi.org/10.25420/britishmuseum.27960084.v1
For centuries, Indigenous wild silks have been traded across West Africa and used in Marka-Dafing’s textiles production in the Mouhoun regions of Burkina Faso. Over the past twenty years, the precious materials that are used by women for weaving their ceremonial wrappers called tuntun, which stands as their material identity, have become a scarce resource due to climate change and human impact on both the insect species and their ecosystem. The production of wild silk cloth that forms a heritage of knowledge and techniques called laada has become obsolete in many places where the material is unavailable and is replaced by vegetal fibres such as kapok or nylon threads that resemble wild silk.
The publication project by Cluster members Laurence Douny and Salif Sawadogo, as well as Lonsani Dayo and Abdoulaye Séré, aims at co-constructing digital documentation of wild silk production with close involvement of Marka-Dafing communities. This documentation includes audio-visual recordings of local material knowledge and techniques about wild silk presented in operational sequences and filmed interviews. Consequently, this digital repository contains detailed documentation of 1) the production techniques of textiles with a focus on processing silk and 2) knowledge about wild silk species, material properties and social value.
Douny, L. 2024. »West African Wild Silks Techniques: Preserving Marka-Dafing’s Heritage of Knowledge.«
https://www.emkp.org/west-african-wild-silks-technique/
https://drs.britishmuseum.org/projects/West_African_wild_silks_techniques_Preserving_Marka-Dafing_s_heritage_of_knowledge/228072