The robe is decorated along the neck opening and upon the chest with mainly geometric motifs. The embroidery is worked with buttonhole stitch and cutwork, using bleached white cotton.
This ceremonial outfit was sent to Arthur Cordon (the managing director of Tideswell Manufacturing Co. and P. Wilson & Co., near Manchester from the early 1940s) by agents in West Africa, who ran the local trading post.
The Agbada robe for a Yoruba man, Nigeria, c. 1940
ULITA online catalogue (retrieved 29 January 2017).
WV