In the Kingdom of Dahomey, hereditary guilds of appliqué artisans served the royal court from workshops in Abomey, cutting bright plain-weave cotton into silhouettes of animals, warriors, kings and proverbs, then stitching them onto a solid cloth ground to record royal history and power. This is the black-ground variant of that tradition: flat, poster-like color blocks — grass-green, saffron, indigo, brick-red, off-white — pinned against deep black cotton, every shape opaque and unshaded, like cloth cut once and sewn down for good.