Displaying items by tag: beadwork

Colour, Pattern and Ethnic Identity in 20^th Century Kenya

By Donna Pido, PhD. 

Associate professor, retired, Department of Design and Creative Media, The Technical University of Kenya

Abstract

This article focuses on the trickle of brightly colored, durable, modular glass beads that became a tsunami by 1902 and enabled highly creative Kenyan women (and a few men), driven by the constant frenzy of change we call ‘fashion’ to develop visual statements of their own beliefs, history, ethnicity and intragroup social status.  By the mid 20^th century all of the many ethnic communities including the Europeans and Asians in Kenya had voluntarily and spontaneously assorted themselves with defining colour and pattern codes.  There is inadequate published information on this subject.  In this article/chapter, the author cherry picks what she has learned, observed and experienced through structured and unstructured research over 53 years from the Maasai, Kisii, Luo, Mijikenda, Kamba, Tharaka, Kikuyu, Kalenjin and Turkana communities.  It all points in the direction of much needed further research on this definitive period in the history of Kenyan visual culture and the details of its many trajectories.