Barkcloth of Uganda: Cloth Beaten From a Living Tree

On a damp morning in the hills of Buganda, in central Uganda, a craftsman stands beside a tall fig tree. With a banana-leaf knife and careful cuts, he peels away a long sheet of the tree's inner bark, then wraps the bare trunk in banana leaves to protect it. Back in a shed, he soaks and steams the bark, lays it over a smooth log, and begins to beat it with a grooved wooden mallet. Hour after hour, the steady thock, thock, thock echoes through the village. Slowly the bark stretches, thins and softens, until it is a large, supple sheet of cloth. Left in the sun, it turns a deep terracotta colour. This is barkcloth, or olubugo in Luganda, one of the oldest textile traditions in the world.

The mutuba tree

Ugandan barkcloth is made from the inner bark of the mutuba tree (Ficus natalensis), a fig that grows in the region's wet, fertile climate. The bark is harvested during the rainy season, when sap is flowing and the bark comes away easily.

Remarkably, harvesting does not kill the tree. After the bark is removed, the trunk is wrapped in banana leaves and soon begins to grow new bark. A single tree can be harvested again and again, roughly once a year, for decades. This makes barkcloth one of the world's most sustainable traditional materials. Mutuba trees are often planted around homes and gardens, where they also provide shade and serve as boundary markers.

How barkcloth is made

The process has several stages:

1. Stripping. The bark is carefully cut and peeled from the trunk in one piece.
2. Scraping. The rough outer bark is scraped away, leaving the fibrous inner layer.
3. Steaming or soaking. The bark is softened, traditionally by steaming it over a fire.
4. Beating. Craftsmen beat the bark on a wooden log with mallets (ensaamo) of different kinds: first with deeply grooved ones to stretch the fibres, then with finer ones to smooth the surface. The bark can stretch to several times its original width.
5. Drying. The cloth is dried in the sun, where it changes from pale cream to a rich reddish-brown.

Traditionally, barkcloth making was the work of men, passed down within families and clans. The craftsmen who made cloth for the Kabaka (king of Buganda) held a special position.

Cloth for kings and for the dead

Barkcloth was once everyday clothing in Buganda. The British missionary and anthropologist John Roscoe, writing in the early 20th century, described in detail how it was worn: men wore it tied over one shoulder, women wrapped it around the body. Different qualities existed, from rough everyday cloth to fine, finely beaten cloth reserved for chiefs and royalty.

Barkcloth also had deep spiritual and ceremonial meaning:

• Royalty. It was worn by the Kabaka and used in coronation ceremonies, and it remains part of royal regalia.
• Funerals. Barkcloth is traditionally used to wrap the dead before burial, a practice that continues in many families today. It is considered a respectful and proper covering for the deceased.
• Healing and spiritual life. It has been used in rituals, as a gift, and at shrines.
• The Kasubi Tombs. At the Kasubi Tombs in Kampala, the burial place of four Kabakas and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, barkcloth hangs inside the great thatched building, separating the sacred inner area from the public space.

Decline and revival

From the 19th century, cotton cloth, first brought by Arab and Swahili traders and later by Europeans, began to replace barkcloth as everyday clothing. Missionaries encouraged the change. By the 20th century, barkcloth was mostly used for funerals and ceremonies, and the number of skilled makers fell.

In 2005, UNESCO proclaimed barkcloth making in Uganda a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, and in 2008 it was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The recognition encouraged efforts to plant more mutuba trees, train young makers and promote barkcloth.

A modern material

Today, barkcloth is enjoying new life. Ugandan designers use it for bags, hats, wallets, lampshades and fashion; artists use it as a canvas for painting and collage; and interior designers use it for wall coverings. Some companies have experimented with barkcloth as an eco-friendly material for furniture and even cars. Contemporary artists in Kampala have used barkcloth to explore Ugandan identity and history.

Barkcloth around the world

Uganda is not the only place where bark has been beaten into cloth. Tapa cloth from the Pacific islands, such as Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, is made in a similar way from paper mulberry bark, and barkcloth was once made in many parts of Central and East Africa, including by the Mbuti people of Congo's Ituri forest, whose painted barkcloths are admired by collectors. The region's other great fibre arts include the woven and embroidered textiles described in our story on Kuba raffia cloth. Barkcloth may be one of humanity's oldest ways of making cloth, older even than weaving.

Why it matters

Ugandan barkcloth shows that a material can be both ancient and modern, sacred and practical. It is made with simple tools, great skill and deep respect for the living tree. In a world searching for sustainable materials, the Baganda craft of beating bark into cloth, without killing the tree, offers a lesson centuries in the making.

Further reading

• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage — Barkcloth making in Uganda (inscribed 2008)
• John Roscoe, The Baganda: An Account of Their Native Customs and Beliefs (Macmillan, 1911)