2.5 Making adinkra

Catherine (VO)

The dye for the cloth is produced from kuntun kruni - the roots from the kuntu plant.

First, twelve buckets of water for one barrel. After that, twenty-five strips of the roots are put into the barrel.

And the next two days, you remove the cover it becomes cool, because if it is hot you can’t put this ….. in, and remove it from here to this small barrel.

This is white cloth - you want to change it into black. When you put it in first it looks like brown, but by two weeks’ time it will change into black.

It takes two weeks, it made ……. Sun.

And when it dries you bring it back, and wet it again, and dry it again, six times. This is called ‘Badie’, it’s the bark of the tree. You find it only in the Savannah area. It’s hard, so we broke it in pieces, like this, and soak it with water for twenty-four hours.

The softened bark is pounded in a mortar and is used to produce the dye for stamping the symbols.

Repeated boiling and filtering produces a concentrated solution.

Gabriel a/b PTC

Out of forty-eight gallons, I’m going to receive only one gallon of the solution. I test it in this way. It’s ready for printing.

Catherine (VO)

The Adinkra stamps are carved from the wood CU stamps being of a gourd or calabash, by a professional carved designer and carver, such as, Joseph Kofi S/I Nsiah.