Decorate your home or office with these beautiful hand-made silk throw pillows.

Nkyimu (n-chi’-moo) represents the crossed divisions made on adinkra cloth before stamping.  It is the symbol of adroitness and precision.  Nkyimu represents the attainment of high quality craftsmanship.  Crafted in 2008, this rendition is executed in three types of silk.  It’s smaller compliment is made of silk, linen, bamboo fibre, and kuba cloth.  The signed and numbered duet offers a tactile vision of tradition when exposed to interpretation by creative energy on this side of the middle passage.   

Adinkra by Grizzell
Symbols that speak louder than words   

HISTORY AND COMPOSITION

Adinkra symbolism is over 500 years old with roots in Ghana and Cote d I’voire, West Africa.  The Akan, one of the larger ethnic groups of West African people of these countries, developed the art and language of adinkra as part of their funerary arts.  The transliteration of the word adinkra means, “a message one gives to another when departing.”  Funerals are significant in the religious and social lives of the Akan.  They are the final rites of passage from the world of the living to that of the “dead.”  The Akan consider death as only one more transition stage in one’s life.  In the afterlife, those who have lived exemplary lives will continue to “live” in a new world and enjoy a place close to Onyankopon, the Supreme Being.  The moment of death is also a moment of birth.  Hence the paradox of “tears and laughter” that characterize most Akan funerals. 

My relationship with adinkra symbolism began while studying early American architecture.  Suffused with the craftsmanship of enslaved artisans, adinkra symbols are prominently displayed in the iron and wood works of the period.  Passing as American design, adinkra symbols were heavily used as architectural embellishment during the Colonial Period.  The Quakers, conductors of the Underground Railroad, and influential supporters/patrons of the abolition of chattel slavery, signified their establishments with Adinkras Aya and Eban.   Evidence of use and popularity may be seen today throughout NW Washington D.C. 

Available in a variety of applications, Artist Grizzell employs 69 (sixty-nine) of the over five hundred documented adinkra symbols, expanding the use and purpose of this age-old art form through fashion, interior, and liturgical design.  Unlike words, images speak to the heart and mind simultaneously.  This may be why the Kemetic hieroglyphs were known throughout the ancient world as, “…the walking, breathing, living language.”  Through images, ideas are communicated on several levels at one time.  Vocational attributes and personal character can be described through images that are catholic in nature and exclusive in design.