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Barkcloth: Pygmies, Zaire
Remarkably, repeated harvesting of the bark of certain fig trees causes no harm to the tree. The tree is bandaged with banana leaves and heals in about one week. Each subsequent harvesting (up to forty times) produces finer and finer barkcloth. After removal, the bark is soaked in water until it is soft enough to be worked. Using ivory or wooden pounders, one or more men beat the bark against a smooth horizontal tree trunk. The width of the bark expands about tenfold and the length about ten percent. The natural interlacing of the bark fibers produces a soft, felt-like material. After drying, delicate patterns are applied by women using black dye made from the juice of the gardenia seed.
Although these cloths come from the Pygmies, many other African cultures have used barkcloth. The neighboring Kuba still use it in ceremonies, calling it the "clothing of the ancestors." The primary centers of barkcloth production are in the Congo basin, but it has been made far to the north in Ghana and to the east on the island of Madagascar.