A Nineteenth-century Shao Bridal Fabric Art as a Metaphor for Starting a Successful Marital Life Journey

Abstract

The article explores the cultural and semiotic elements of aso alaro, a Yoruba bridal fabric that features interesting animal and domestic object motifs. Generally spectacular bridal aso alaro were stored away after the wedding event and they became treasures that many people beheld later in life particularly because of the design motifs. This paper demonstrates how the iconographic features of the focused bridal fabric could be defined and interpreted by means of verbal arts and in terms of Yoruba cultural values, and attempts to establish that, although this type of cloth design/tradition has eclipsed in the context of modernity, its meanings are significant enough to engage intellectual attention as through which a society tried to articulate its understandings of social and cultural experience.