These beautiful appliqué banners are among the most important items of royal court art from the Kingdom of Dahomey, now in the Republic of Benin. Until they transferred their role to the making of tourist arts in the mid 20th century, families of specialist textile workers at the court in Abomey supplied dramatic wall hangings that praised the king and illustrated key aspects of his social identity and achievements.

This appliqué can be associated with King Glele’s reign as it is showing the Daguesu war bocio with its ram-form head, weapons, bo power gourds, and a lightning axe blade extending from the mouth. In this cloth the king is given an anthropozoomorphic form, symbolizing strength, and is represented far larger than the his soldiers and his enemies. This richly decorated banner represents a war scene, accentuated by the scatterred group of armed men holding swords. The king’s soldiers defeat his black-colored Nago-Yoruba enemies, who can be identified by their ethnic scars on their cheeks.

The quai Branly museum in Paris holds a very similar banner that entered their collections before 1936 and is also attributed to the famous Yémadjé family (#71.1936.21.12). This family were the principal appliqué workers at the Dahomey court, to whom all royal commissions were confided. Note that the soldiers and the enemies were cut from two patterns.