Turkana Beaded Loin Cloth or Cache Sexe

This fine, old textile has been hand-stitched with dozens of rows of coloured glass trade beads of different shapes, colours and sizes. The textile is of woven cotton from a hand loom. It has two strings at the top for attaching to the waist and would have been used as a loin cloth or genital cover (cache sexe).

It is from the Turkana People who inhabit northwest Kenya bordering Lake Turkana as well as adjacent areas in Uganda and South Sudan. They are mainly semi-nomadic pastoralists, and the lands they traditionally have occupied are semi-arid.

The principal type of bead used is the small red white-heart bead that was produced in Venice. These beads were traded across the world and were particularly popular among the various tribal groups in Africa.

This example has obvious age and most of the beads are intact. It is a fine ethnographic piece that almost certainly arrived in the UK during the colonial era.