Text from Introduction:

"This is a book devoted to the celebration of a wonderfully graphic and kinetic tribal art form. From out of West Africa, a land normally associated by the Westerner with the most severe of the there is to be tribal arts - with expressive masking and silent statuary found a collection of brightly coloured and patterned cloth flags that adorn villages and towns at the time of festivals and funerals. Whether held aloft in a dance, or displayed as banners, the textiles glow with colour, inspire with imagery and excite with allegory. These are the appliqué patchwork and embroidered flags of the Fante people of Ghana. Today there are over a million Fante people inhabiting the coastal and forest fringes of Ghana, a zone that witnessed the earliest forays of the white man south of the Sahara. The first visitors were a band of Portuguese adventurers who in 1471 sailed along the West African coast on a quest for exotic tradestuffs. From the moment that their ships dropped anchor the culture of the Fante was never to be the same again. A panoply of Europeans followed the Portuguese. Dutch, French, Swedes, Danes, Brandenburgers and British traded gold, ivory and slaves from within a string of coastal forts for over three and a half centuries. The Fante not only formed strategic alliances with these Europeans to parry the power of the mighty Ashanti Empire, but were also deeply impressed by the technology and by the pomp and pageantry of the 'Oburinifo' ('the people from the hole in the seas horizon').
Such influences were keenly absorbed by the warrior groups of the Fante, known as 'Asafo'. As European military organization was adopted, so the identity of an Asafo company was developed and refined by way of new uniforms, flags and banners. Such a mixture of cultures brought forth an unlikely result, for the Fante craftsmen took to the format of the European flags and created an exuberant art form that marries the ancient West African tradition of communication by proverb with a powerful military display of ceremony and provocation. The confidence and skill with which the flagmakers have created these visual messages, as well as the wide range of expressive styles employed, is evidence of an extraordinarily vital and exciting graphic art movement that continues to create to this day the flags of the Fante Asafo."