University of Southern California Digital Library, includes a large collection of historical photographs from missionary groups, "taken on the boundary between European and African and Asian cultures between 1850 and 1950. The photographs you can find here were mostly taken by missionaries... Judging by their photographs many of these men and women were fascinated by the unknown world around them which they were gradually learning to understand, and had great respect for the people with whom they lived and worked." In Africa, the Basel Mission had a presence in Ghana and in Cameroon. [the photo at left shows three Ghanaian women spinning cotton, and was taken in the 1860s!] [posted: Mar 04, 2004]

By Christopher D. Roy, Professor of Art History at the University of Iowa. This extensive essay examines the history of the various peoples who live in present day Burkina Faso. Various crafting traditions are examined - furniture, pottery, jewelry, weaving - with particular attention to the masking traditions. There is also a cross-cultural comparative stylistic summary for the various peoples of the region - Mossi, Gurunsi, Bwa, Bobo, Marka-Dafing. Great ethnographic images. [posted: Mar 04, 2004]

African Fabric Shop specializes in genuine African fabrics - wax prints, batiks, Indigo, wax resist, tie dye and more. The website is also very informative. "Magie Relph and Bob Irwin have travelled the length and breadth of Africa for over 30 years, researching, buying and documenting African textiles, fabrics and beads. In addition to our acclaimed book African Wax Print: A Textile Journey, we continue to write informative and entertaining articles for numerous magazines. They document our adventures and record the textile traditions we've learned about from artisans and traders all over Africa." [posted: Mar 04, 2004]

Ousmane Sow is a Senegalese artist whose work has been well received and admired throughout the world. His web site provides an extensive overview of his life and works, with many photographs, video clips, interviews and writings. And also his children's drawings... [posted: Mar 04, 2004]

Explore the museum's collections as well as its past exhibitions of "tradition-based" as well as contemporary arts. The site produces special web presentations for most of its exhibitions, and an archive of these is available online. In the collection area of the site you are able to search over 10,000 works in its database. [posted: Mar 04, 2004]

"The Africa Center is built on the extraordinary legacy of the Museum for African Art. Founded in 1984, the Museum for African Art organized nearly 70 exhibitions of historical and contemporary art from Africa and its Diaspora in 140 venues spread across 80 cities, 17 countries and 4 continents." They have made these wonderful publications available for reading online (free). [posted: Mar 04, 2004]

Compiled by Janet Stanley, National Museum of African Art Library, Smithsonian Institution Libraries. The reading list gives extensive annotations of each entry, and is being updated continually. [posted: Mar 04, 2004]

There are roughly 1500 photographs on this site, as of this writing, mostly of the Dogon and Lobi areas (but not only). The photographs are gorgeous, and the site is well organized so that you can browse the images by topic of interest and by location. [posted: Mar 04, 2004]

"Digital Benin brings together all objects, historical photographs and rich documentation material from collections worldwide to provide a long-requested overview of the royal artefacts from Benin Kingdom looted in the late nineteenth century. The digital platform introduces new scholarship which connects digital documentation about the translocated objects to oral histories, object research, historical context, a foundational Edo language catalogue, provenance names, a map of the Benin Kingdom and museum collections worldwide. Digital Benin connects data from 5,246 objects across 131 institutions in 20 countries." [posted: Nov 17, 2022]

The web site of Lisa Shepard, a writer and designer who has authored several books about creative decorating with African fabrics. In addition to selling African fabrics and beads, her web site offers free crafting ideas, information on her lectures and appearances, as well as her books and other products. If you're looking for African fabrics and ideas for what to make with those fabrics, you'll want to visit this website! [posted: Mar 04, 2004]