Archival Significance
Part of Barbara Tyrrell’s body of illustrated ethnographic work, produced during a period when illustrated surveys of this kind were a popular but now critically contested genre, documenting dress and material culture through watercolour illustration rather than photography.
Institutional Context
Published by Books of Africa, a Cape Town-based publisher associated with popular Africana titles of the period.
Content Summary
An illustrated overview of the dress, ornament and material culture of various peoples across Southern Africa.
Research Utility
Useful to researchers of costume and material culture history, and of the popular ethnographic genre itself, including its colonial-era framing and categorisation of identity.
Abantu Archives Note
Held in-house; a title whose genre and terminology, as with much of its era, calls for critical rather than uncritical use.