Wearing Art: The African City Silk Scarf Collaboration with The Suter Art Gallery
Quick answer: The African City silk scarf is a limited edition made by LS Silk with The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū in Nelson, New Zealand. It translates African City, a painting by modernist John Weeks, onto 100% mulberry silk with hand-rolled edges, and is sold through the gallery. It shows how a collection artwork becomes a gift shop scarf.
There is a quiet kind of luxury in wearing art: the feeling of carrying a story and a piece of cultural history wherever you go. The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū partnered with us to reimagine a work by modernist painter John Weeks as a limited-edition mulberry silk scarf.
A modernist classic, reborn in silk
At the center of the project is African City, an oil-on-strawboard painting by John Weeks (1886–1965), one of New Zealand's earliest abstractionists.
Inspired by his travels across Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in the 1920s, the artwork blends Cubist geometry with architectural rhythm, a composition that feels almost destined for silk, where color and form shift gently with movement.
For The Suter, an institution with roots going back to 1890, the project is part of a wider aim: to take art beyond the gallery and into daily life.
From gallery wall to silk
The collaboration began with a simple question: how do you honor a modernist masterpiece while letting it live in a new, tactile form?
Working closely with The Suter's curatorial team, we adapted Weeks' composition with care, preserving its tonal structure and palette while allowing for the drape and sheen of mulberry silk. Our guides to designing for silk and color accuracy explain what that involves.
John Weeks: the artist behind the work
Born in Devon and raised in New Zealand, John Weeks became a pioneering figure of early twentieth-century modernism. After training in Europe, including time studying under André Lhote in Paris, he returned home with a distinctly international outlook.
His travels across North Africa gave his work architectural depth, bold geometry and rhythmic composition. He was one of the first New Zealand artists to fully embrace abstraction.
A scarf that carries a story
Made from 100% mulberry silk and finished with hand-rolled edges, the African City scarf is more than an accessory. It is a piece of modernist history made wearable.
Knotted at the neck, looped through a handbag, worn as a headscarf or draped over the shoulders, it lets the geometric forms unfold with every movement. With only a limited run produced, it is a collector's piece.
Where to find it
The African City silk scarf is available exclusively through The Suter Art Gallery in Nelson, New Zealand.
Planning a scarf for your own gallery?
Read our guide for museum and gallery gift shops and our walkthrough of how a museum scarf commission works.
Have artwork of your own? Choose your size, silk and finish and see your price right away. Start your scarf in the Custom Studio →
Have a question first? Email support@lovesilk.com.
Related reading: The complete guide to ordering custom silk scarves in the United States · Our work