African wax prints

They were introduced to West Africans by Dutch merchants during the 19th century, who took inspiration from native Indonesian batik designs.

Initially used by Nigerian Hausa tradesmen, it was meant to refer to "Accra," which served as a hub for African prints in the 19th century.

Wax prints are a type of nonverbal communication among African women, and thereby carry their messages out into the world.

[citation needed] Some wax prints are named after personalities, cities, buildings, sayings, or occasions.

[10] The process to make wax print is originally influenced by batik, an Indonesian (Javanese) method of dyeing cloth by using wax-resist techniques.

By 1854[11]: 16–17  he had modified a Perrotine, the mechanical block-printing machine invented in 1834 by Louis-Jérôme Perrot, to instead apply a resin to both sides of the cloth.

Another method, used by several factories including Prévinaire's[11]: 18, 20  and van Vlissingen's,[12] used the roller printing technology invented in Scotland in the 1780s.

[11]: 17–18 Starting in the 1880s,[12][11]: 47, 50  they did, however, experience a strong reception in West Africa when Dutch and Scottish trading vessels began introducing the fabrics in those ports.

Many members of the Belanda Hitam retired to Elmina, in modern Ghana, where they may have provided an early market for Dutch imitation batik.

Women used the fabrics as a method of communication and expression, with certain patterns being used as a shared language, with widely understood meanings.

The Haarlemsche Katoenmaatschappij went bankrupt during the First World War, and its copper roller printing cylinders were bought by van Vlissingen's company.

[16] These companies have helped reduce the prices of African wax prints in the continent when compared to European imports.

At first the fancy prints were made with engraved metal rollers but more recently they are produced using rotary screen-printing process.

[15] The production of these imitation wax-print fabrics, allow those who cannot afford the European imported wax prints to be able to purchase them.