Cut from a Bigger Cloth

Cut from a Bigger Cloth reflects the path that brought Addoley Dzegede to making textile work based primarily on the history of wax print and how Dutch manufacturers copied Indonesian batik through an industrial process, making a cloth that eventually became so identified with Africa that many don't realize its origins.

The book is divided into sections, including photos from Addoley's family archive of studio photographs in the years following Ghana's independence from British colonization, and one photo possibly from before (of Addoley's great-great-grandfather). Some of the wax prints that family members and her father’s friends are wearing are still made today by Vlisco in Helmond. There is a section of risographs based on drawings she made of batiks in the Quai Branly collection and at the Victoria & Albert Museum. And there are her musings on how she became interested in these histories, trains of thought made during research trips, examples of her work over the past 7 years, as well as a section with natural dye recipes from the Color + Conquest course she taught at Piet Zwart Institute.