Senegalese sous-verre is West Africa's most generous folk illustration tradition: painters apply opaque enamel to the back of a glass pane in reverse order — highlights first, then mid-tones, then black contours last. From Saint-Louis and Touba workshops came thousands of household icons of Sufi marabouts, Quranic-verse panels, and Wolof daily life.

The aesthetic is both sacred and joyful. Flat saturated pigment — fuchsia, saffron, kelly green, cobalt — sits inside thick jet-black contour lines, like stained glass without lead. Each color shape hovers just shy of its outline, leaving a tiny halo gap that marks the work as hand-painted.