Cloth

This cloth is one of three textiles, originally owned by J. H. Swainson, a trader with the Liverpool firm Pinnock & Co. The three textiles (1981.388.1-3) were presented to the museum in 1981 by Peter Karpinski, who acquired them from his great aunt Flo, Swainson’s daughter. This width of cotton cloth in plain weave is decorated with red warp stripes and faint red weft stripes grouped in threes at intervals. Made with with two-ply machine-spun cotton thread, it could have been manufactured in Manchester and might be an example of one of the goods that British traders sold to Edo and Itsekiri traders at trading stations on the Benin River in the 1890s.