Honor to The Un-Named

Dyed cotton, linen and rayon, wire, coconut shells, 15" x 36", 2022, NFS

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Inspired by: Nike Davies Okundaye, Ibadan is Sweet (adire eleko)

     

     This piece is a tribute to John “Quash” Williams and the nineteen other un-named enslaved West Africans whose skills and labor produced the first viable indigo dye matter in the 18th century British colony of Charleston, South Carolina.

     The kidnapped Africans carried with them the considerable knowledge, culture and skills of the cultures of their home countries.

     They worked on land owned by Eliza Lucas Pinckney, an amateur botanist, and Charles Pinckney. Over the years Eliza Lucas Pinckney had tried repeatedly— and unsuccessfully—to grow indigo dye matter for export. Around 1745, with information shared by one of the enslaved Africans and with the skills and labor of the others, the highly laborious and painstaking processes of cultivating indigo and extracting a high-quality viable dye were successful. The result was a valuable export that shifted the entire economy and trade of the southeast seaboard.