Quand la technique n’est plus là. Documenter la teinture à l’indigo au Nord Bénin (xixe-xxe siècles)

Abstract

Indigo dyeing was an essential element of the cotton-based textile industry, practised in dozens of workshops in North Benin on the eve of the colonial occupation. The activity lasted during the first half of the 20th century, then began to decline until its complete disappearance in the early 1990s. Since 2011, I have been trying to document dyeing practices in North Benin, through interviews with former dyers and visits to the sites of workshops. The aim is to document the technical processes, their socio-economic framework and their historical trajectory. Since 2020, this research has been integrated into a more ambitious project devoted to the entire textile industry and intended to produce visual archives for the British Museum’s “Endangered Material Knowledge Programme”. In this paper, I present the main findings of the fieldwork, focusing first on the methods used to document a lost technique and then providing an overview of the technical processes and context in which indigo dyeing was practiced.

Keywords

• indigo dyeing
• textile
• ethnography of techniques
• field methods