The Bamileke elephant mask — *mbap mteng* — is royal regalia of the Kuosi masking society in Cameroon's Grassfields kingdoms, worn only by titleholders close to the fon (king). Deep-indigo trade cloth is completely covered in imported Venetian and Bohemian glass beads, worked into rows of white triangles that read as leopard spots — an animal, like the elephant itself, reserved for royal symbolism. Long beaded panels hang front and back, evoking the elephant's trunk and ears as the masquerader dances.

This design system distills that regalia into a digital language: a saturated indigo bead-field as the unshakeable ground, hard-edged white triangles marching in disciplined rows, and flashes of royal red, black, and gold picked out like accent beads. Nothing here is soft — every surface is flat, matte, and densely patterned, the way ten thousand individually strung beads read from a distance as a shimmering, rigid grid.