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Description

Heavy square canvas apron with beadwork decoration on the front. Canvas is rolled and stitched at the top edge to create a waist band, across which are stitched four strings of large white beads and through which is knotted one skin tie. A thick blue bead trim runs around the edge of the horizontal bands of beads that form a white ground, with non-beaded negative spaces at the top and dark blue, green, purple and black house designs at the bottom.

History Of Use

Unmarried, initiated girl’s apron, called isiphephetu, typically with a pattern that represents architecture. According to Powell ('Ndebele: a People and Their Art') it is a 'stiff rectangular apron worn by young girls after they have completed the period of seclusion which constitutes female initiation. "In contrast with the ligabi, the isiphephetu’s beading is usually more than merely geometric in its design, and it is here for the first time that the symbolism of the house is essayed in the bead cycle. Often the iphephetu is also the site for more fanciful flights of imagination in Ndebele beading, and such motifs as electric lights, chimneys and telephone poles... the isiphephetu is made by the wearer’s mother while the girl is in seclusion, and it serves to express the mother’s aspirations for her daughter. In the older context, these translate themselves into a range of domestic symbolism, mainly in the form of house motifs, but as the bonds of traditional appropriateness have loosened, such motifs as the aeroplane, which in the Ndebele language is known as a ‘Ufly’, have become increasingly common…" The isphephetu is usually worn with a backskirt, known as an isithimba.

Item History

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