North of Côte d'Ivoire, around Korhogo, Senufo painters work on fanhi — narrow bands of hand-spun cotton woven by men and sewn edge to edge. The pigment is not dye but a fermented mud slurry, rich in iron, that reacts with a plant-tannin bath brushed onto the cloth first. The drawing appears slowly, in oxidised black-brown.\n\nThe figures come from the poro, the initiation society: the hornbill, the crocodile, the chameleon, the masked dancer. They were painted for hunters and for ceremony long before they were painted for sale, and the older cloths are read rather than admired.\n\nWorking with Korhogo today means accepting its rhythm. Cotton is seasonal, the mud must ferment, and the sun sets the pigment. Nothing about it scales the way a print does — which is precisely the point.
