IMAGINE YOURSELF IN AFRICA, VISITING THE ASHANTI,
KENTE, or MALI TRIBES
You can have a wonderful trip to AFRICA and make hundreds of starving
villagers happy; buying their cotton, like MALI BLUE and the Picasso
type prints above. You can bring home beautiful artworks and make l00 times
what you paid. You can shoot a documentary and get DISCOVER Channel
to show it and make a million dollars extra. You can take the money back
to AFRICA as the bicycle wheel foot pedal turned water irritgation system
featured in HEROES PBS series which Redford narrated. The
BICYCLE PUMP allows Villagers to bring water from a river to the
crops by hose, not bucket. It pumps. 80$ but nobody there has that kind
of money. YOU WILL!
Famed, tasteful Atlanta dealer/ collector gallery owner Marla Mallett's website (her Atlanta store is a virtual museum,) and the website has many pictures of the textile art that she collected. A 4x6 weaving is a thousand dollars. http://www.marlamallett.com
To understand the entire region, the esthetic traditions, http://students.clarku.edu/~jborgatt/african_textiles.htm
See if links work at this one: read: http://www.du.edu/duma/africloth/links.html
Report back to me if not, astrology@earthlink.net
Learn why ASHANTI fabric is worth a thousand dollars a 4 x 6 long piece
in Atlanta Georgia, USA.
READ UP ON THE MALI villages.
Read up on KENTE
CLOTH
http://www.nmafa.si.edu/exhibits/kente/strips.htm
featured in this art exhibit.
http://www.hamillgallery.com/EXHIBITIONS/Textile.html
Lovely photos of fab stuff on exhibit in a gallery
These are valuable items and be glad folks are beginning to know it!
HUGE collection of photos, videos, stories at
http://www.quiltethnic.com/textiles.html
Then,http://www.adire.clara.net/core.htm
has many other tribes.
and the page at Adire where they tell HOW they are woven:
http://www.adireafricantextiles.com/africantextintro1.htm
Doesn't this appeal to you? What a vacation! Do it in WINTER
so you won't bake in Africa or freeze here at home.
You can buy fabrics in pieces, sell them just as they are ---by the yard, though some artists move there, and uses the artisans to do their dressmaking work. One artist whose work I found online at one of these sites uses the FINEST PLAIN, unprinted KIMONA silk which he buys in JAPAN. AND HAS it printed by Africans and then made into styles that favor primitive prints.
I just found a cheap THAI business that copies the KIMONO 
shape,
using THAI FABRIC and they make very cheap but gorgeous dresses. PRINTED
KIMONO silk is so very costly, there's no way you could buy the real thing
and make inexpensive dresses, but look at this copy. Women would buy this
thing like crazy for at home entertaining. The INDIANS make block printed
cotton bedspreads for almost no cash which are fabulous fabric, cotton
that's printed, charming, folklorico. AND CHEAP.
If you travel to AFRICA, BUY TRIBAL MASKS. PACK THEM 
BETWEEN
THE LAYERS OF FABRIC. Carefully PLASTIC WRAP the MASKS as they WILL definitely
soil the fabric. TO SEE what MASKS GO FOR, $225 to 1,000 dollars usually,
see this MASK WEBSITE.
NOTE: IF the reader of this file is in AFRICA
already, SEEK OUT THIS KIND OF trade ITEM, get digital photos taken, then
use CRAIGS LIST ORG online to find your business partners. They will function
as vendor-AGENTS IN BIG MONEY CITIES, (THE EURO) or MEDIUM MONEY CITIES
(USA)
Set up a shipping route. It will enrich both of you so neither of you
two will cheat the other. The vendor will go to the Parisian, Swiss, German,
Beverly Hills, Houston Texas boutiques with digitals and get orders. The
vendor will not tell the buyer about you, because then obviously, you could
shut the vendor agent out. The vendor agent will send you a money order,
payable to your bank on proof of your having shipped the mask. After a
few years, you may trust one another enough to not require this step.
Any questions I am astrology at earthlink dot net in Hollywood California.
MARLA MALLETT dot com has prices for her INDIAN TEXTILES in DOLLARS. She sells out of a shop in Atlanta Georgia -- Checkitout. THE PRICES for the fabrics from INDIA, the cotton purses, etc.
E-3970
Chitin Embroidered Bag. Gujarat,
India. 25"x 36"
$465
E-3973
Embroidered Gujarat Toran. India.
50"x 34"`
$175
E-3976
Tie-Dye Shawl with Silver Embroidery.
India. 67"x 68½"
$285
E-4021
Pashtun Tray Cover. Ghazni area,
Katawaz. Afghanistan. 22"x 27½"
$345
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