Joanne B. Eicher’s collection of more than 500 African textiles, primarily Nigerian, can now be viewed through an online database at the University of Minnesota, thanks to a grant from UMRA’s Professional Development Grants for Retirees (PDGR) program. The Eicher African Textile Collection site features nearly 3,000 color photographs. It also includes a link to her article, Reflecting on Collecting: My Romance with African Textiles, in which Eicher, a Regents Professor Emerita at the Department of Design, Housing and Apparel, describes how she turned her passion for collecting textiles into an academic pursuit.

One specialty of the collection is pelete bite, a type of cloth worn by the Kalabari. They use a base of imported Indian madras on which they impose another design by subtracting threads to leave a shadowy pattern. A link to a short video demonstrating the centuries-old technique for making this type of cloth is embedded in the first photo in Eicher's African photo collection in the U of M Libraries UMedia digital library.

Eicher used a 2015-16 PDGR program grant to create an image bank with descriptions of her African textile collection for uploading to the U of M’s UMedia Website. A 2016-17 grant extension enabled her to complete the project, which included organizing an edited volume of published and unpublished materials from her fieldwork undertaken with the Kalabari people over nearly 30 years. She is now working with the University of Indiana Press, the premier press for African Studies, on publication of a manuscript. 

The PDGR program is open to all University retirees who will be fully retired by July 2018. The deadline for grant applications is December 15, 2017, and approved grants will begin in April 2018 for the period ending in June 2019. This year the application process will be different from in the past. It will be entirely online; no email or paper applications will be accepted. New instructions for applying will be posted on the UMRA website by mid-October