User:Sketchy Bee/Akwete cloth/Emilyelizabeth19 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Sketchybee


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * User:Sketchy Bee/Akwete cloth


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Akwete cloth

Evaluate the drafted changes

 * Lead: Wiki suggests making the first sentence in the intro a definition of the topic- maybe try swapping the first two sentences so that the cloth is the subject of the first sentence?
 * I think the introduction could include slightly less detail about Dada Nwakata that could be added to the history section.

Here's how I would restructure the lead:

{Akwete cloth is a unique, hand woven textile created with processed sisal, hemp, raffia, cotton, or other fibers into finished products. Production, trading, utilization, and selling of Akwete cloth is a popular and long lasting tradition of the Akwete community, created through a process aptly called Akwete weaving, or “aruru,” meaning “something woven." While the coarse raffia materials are used for masquerades and in the past as headgear for warriors among other uses, the hemp material was used to weave towels, ropes, and handbags. The traditions and techniques of Akwete weaving developed between the 14th and 16th centuries. Akwete cloth is woven solely by women on a vertical loom, and as Akwete cloth quickly rose to the area’s primary trade product along the Nile Delta during the decline of the palm oil trade. Akwete cloths contain many motifs. Today, women continue to produce Akwete cloth for a wide, global market.

Akwete, known also as Ndoki are an African community living in the area of Abia State in present day Nigeria. Multiple creation stories exist for Awekete cloth, though evidence of their existence goes back as far as the 17th and 18th century, possibly even to the origin of Igboland itself. The Federal Commission of Museums and Monuments in Nigeria has excavated pieces of Akwete cloth dating back to the ninth century.

Popular oral tradition states that a woman named Dada Nwakata was the first well known Akwete weaver. She helped further the weaving practice by introducing threads from the Acham cloth, acquired through trade with the Portuguese in the 14th-16th century. Studying the structures of the cloth, Dada developed a style similar to Acham completely in secret. A deaf and mute friends of hers later revealed Dada’s weaving patterns and techniques after her death.}


 * Add citations to the intro and motif paragraphs
 * motifs are really interesting! good work