Adire Eleko Fabric Art

Title: Adire Eleko Fabric Art
Author: Udu Yakubu
Year of Publication: 2015
ISBN: 978-978-51256-4-1
Pages: 295 + xvii

Investigations on adire fabrics have been conducted in the past from dierent perspectives. A preponderance of scholars concentrated on general adire designs and the corresponding production techniques….  As illuminating as these works are, none of them focused on the problems, struggles, emotions and other responses of adire eleko artists to the adire trade and Nigeria’s political development. It is this very important gap that Adire Eleko Fabric Art: A Vanishing Nigerian Indigo Impression by Tunde M. Akinwumi has come to eectively bridge.

Thus, this work must be considered a landmark publication. Perhaps for the first time, we have a work that gives readers access to an indigenous art historian’s perspective on the problems and
achievements of artists who had been in the adire trade over the past century, taking into consideration the wider economic history of adire in Yorubaland…

A.I. Asiwaju,
Emeritus Professor of History, University of Lagos, Nigeria