Beadwork is one of the primary crafts of women across East Africa. Each community has its own beadwork style and techniques that are passed down and innovated with each generation.
The Thembu are a community of isiXhosa speaking people who live around the southeast of South Africa. Bead wear is worn by all members of society. Small quantities are worn every day with more elaborate bead-dress for special occasions. Everything can be made more beautiful by beadwork. Body harnesses, tobacco pipes (inqaqa), spectablce frames, headbands, facemasks etc
Bead craft is passed on from mother to daughter, sister to sister, friend to friend. From an early age children learn how to plait simple grass chains using ripe stems from the Msingizana grass. It is a democratic craft, any woman can learn and her skill grows over time. Young women create the most modern and innovative work and as women get older the beadwork becomes more intricate. It is a communal art that is practiced in the winter months when the harvest is in.
Beadwork is now considered traditional but came from the European impact on the land. In the past beads were made from natural materials such as shells. Glass beads were imported first by Arab traders sailing down the East African coast. Then by Europeans for trade. Wholesalers supplied outposts and missionaries carried the beads inland.
Initially beadwork was used to distinguish the wealthy, then to represent a woman’s dowry. In the nineteenth century the art of making clothing and body ornament grew as the market was flooded. Glass beads and later plastic beads were integrated into Xhosa culture as well as other east coast cultures including Zula and Ndebele.
The threading process is called ukuhlala. In the 1800’s animal sinew from either side of the backbone of goats were used as thread. Or twisted plant fibre for example from Aloe Aborescens plant, ikhala. The beads were threaded without a needle.
As cotton thread became widely available, it became more popular and more recently nylon threads. With both a needle is used for the threading. The work is stitched into a flat fabric or tab backing for example cowhide, goatskin or cloth. Beads are linked one at a time with an existing row or series of rows of beads. The openwork mean that the pieces cover a large area using a relatively small number of beads.
Thembu designs involve geometric shapes and contrasting colours are combined to form a patterns. The geometric patterns require great mathematical skill and patience. Like all clothing bead dress has trends in styles. For example, the popularity of colours is regulated by the prevailing fashion of the time. Decorative such as buttons and pompoms change with the trends.
Beadwork also provides an important outlet for self-expression that reflects the individual style of the creator and wearer. Bead wear is also designed for the wearers body and each piece unique in creation. Individuality is expressed in how the items are combined to showcase wearers ingenuity and flare for style. It is very personal and when a someone passes on to the ancestors their bead wear is buried with them or burned.
Beadwork can be seen as an expression of love. Women make beads for themselves, their friends, family members, teenage loves, husbands, lovers and children. The designs may tell a story or relay a message and it could also be decorative. During the second week of a baby’s life their mother makes them a kotso. A waistband with three strands of coloured beads that’s regularly made longer, it’s used to measure the baby’s growth. She also makes a charm to prevent fevers which also doubles as a teething necklace of beads and seads of Job’s Tears.
Teenage girls make special headbands, icelo, to initiate courtship with boy of her choice. If he accepts this their relationship is established. If they breakup, he returns the items she made for him. Uniquely Thembu men amass and wear quantities of beadwork. Their outfits are more elaborate than the women’s.
Thembu beadwork plays an important role in providing people with a sense of belonging to a larger whole and identity. It could also be seen as a form of resistance to colonial rule. Both in creating a communal identity and it’s use as a form of communication. A visual language that is understandable only by the culturally literate.
Some colours, patterns and motifs were developed to show symbolic references, concepts and social identities. For example, a person’s gender, age range, relationship status, number of children, social role, spiritual state and personal qualities like diligence. Each Xhosa community has its own set of colour combinations and patterns to symbolise various life stages and age groups.
On the weekends there are parties for specific age grades. Teenagers attend umtshotsho, young people intlombe, and there are dances for the middle aged and more mature. People wear large quantities of elaborate bead wear for the events. The beauty of the bead attire emphasises the wearers movements as they dance and sing.
Finally, beadwork is linked to ancestral tradition, spirituality and nature. The concepts of the beauty of life and communal morals are expressed through beadwork, songs and dances.
Popular motifs and symbols are inspired by the beautiful undulating land with softly rounded hills and wooded valleys. Motifs include chevron to symbolise trees, zig zags to symbolise rivers a mythic river snake and diamonds to symbolize stars. Other patterns include squares, lozenges, triangle, v shapes and straight lines.
Colours too can hold symbolic meaning; yellow symbolises fertility and green new life. Red is beloved by the ancestral spirits and the colour of the amaQaba faith. The colour comes from red ochre (is a clay earth pigment which is a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand) or red clay. It is both rubbed on the body to give a glowing red colour and used as a dye on cloth. Different tribes have a different shade that they prefer and colours vary from palest orange to the deepest red brow. The Thembu colour is a deep brick red.
White symbolizes wellbeing, purity and revelation, meditation, supernatural clarity and inspiration from the ancestors. White clay ingceke is used to shows that that the wearer is separated from regular communal life and is having a change of role. For example a nursing mother. Spiritual leaders, Amagqirha, wear a white beaded veil, amageza (beads of madness) which induces a trance when swaying before the eyes. Only white beads were used as offerings to the spirits and on very rare occasions to the Creator.
Writer: Grace Browne
Resources
Beadwork and it’s cultural significance among the Xhosa people- Dawn Costello
Beadwork and it’s cultural significance among Xhosa People part 2
CNN- Beautiful beads that tell the story of a people
The Tembu: their beadwork, songs, and dances book by Joan A Broster
African Beadwork (amongst the Thembu -a sub group of the Xhosa – People) – Africa Bead http://www.africabead.com/history.htm
Beadwork Inventing “African Traditions” in South Africa by Anitra Nettleton ; https://artafricamagazine.org/beadwork-inventing-african-traditions-in-south-africa-anitra-nettleton/
Illuminated signs: style and meaning in the beadwork of the Xhosa- and Zulu-speaking peoples- African Arts magazine
The Glory of African Beadwork by Ettagale Blauer and photographed by Jason Laure.
Xhosa; https://www.everyculture.com/wc/Rwanda-to-Syria/Xhosa.html
Symbols of self: Art and Identity in Southern Africa
The Specifically Declared Broster Beadwork collection
Illuminated Signs. Style and Meaning in the Beadwork of the Xhosa– and Zulu-Speaking Peoples by Gary Van Wyk
Images from African Elegance book by Joan A Broster, Alice Mertens
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