Practice-Led Explorations of the Cape Coast Crab Motif in Tie-and-Dye and Kente Textiles

This scholarly article reconceptualizes the fabric workshop as a living repository—an active hub for generating and safeguarding ancestral wisdom. It achieves this through a hands-on examination of the Oguaa (Cape Coast) crustacean emblem, reimagining it via resist-dyeing and adapted Kente weaving methods. Deeply rooted in the ancestral heritage of Ghana's Cape Coast, the Oguaa Akoto crustacean embodies profound philosophical values like tenacity, flexibility, tactical brilliance, and collective endurance. Nevertheless, its modern integration within fabric artistry is a largely neglected area in academic literature. Utilizing a qualitative, creation-driven framework, this research combines practical studio trials as the core investigative tool with historical reviews and guided conversations involving local artisans and cultural experts within the Cape Coast metropolitan area. The creative journey—covering ideation, material testing, fabrication, and visual evaluation—operates as the primary method of discovering knowledge, rather than a mere secondary component. The outcomes demonstrate that the workshop acts as an evolving vault where traditional symbology is simultaneously conserved and reinvented. Expressed through resist-dyeing and woven Kente, the crustacean emblem preserves its intellectual profundity while adopting fresh visual styles that resonate with modern sociocultural dynamics. This inquiry enriches academic discourse on creation-based investigative frameworks, native epistemologies, and the capacity of tangible artifacts to uphold immaterial cultural legacies in present-day Ghanaian textile creation.