African staff, 1900 - 1950’s, Likely Yoruba

Hey, everyone I have acquired a staff and am interested to know more about it. It appears to be Yoruba, and has a detachable bird, as is a motif of many Yoruba crowns. I was wondering if anyone had any information on it or ideas about its age. Link below

https://imgur.com/a/N8NgkpI

 

A lot of folks won't click links to view pics, even if it's a safe URL like imgur. It's best to direct link all of the jpegs in your post. I'll include one for you:

 

@2manybooks

 

I agree it is Yoruba in style. But it is difficult to confidently identify or date such objects without an actual history/provenance. Yoruba artists have been making "diviners' sashes" for sale for some time, and staffs such as this would also find a ready market. (See a previous discussion of the sashes here:
https://www.antiquers.com/threads/help-with-tribal-beaded-sash.81512/#post-9575971 )

Here are some examples of similar beaded staffs, where the gallery is careful to describe them as "Yoruba style", "probably made for sale", and "While originating from the African continent, this staff is likely not created by the tribe who invented the design".

https://www.hamillgallery.com/YORUBA/YorubaBeadedStaffs/YorubaBeadedStaff04.html

https://www.hamillgallery.com/YORUBA/YorubaBeadedStaffs/YorubaBeadedStaff01.html

 

the seller said he got it in the 80’s from someone who had acquired it at an estate sale from a collector who was a professional collector.

it looks older than 40 years old to me since the person who had it was an artist and a collector, so it wasn’t neglected. But that’s all the history I have for it.

 

I am no expert. But I will add that the color of beads on the OP's staff--kind of translucent and 'glittery'--are not what I'm accustomed to seeing on the Yoruba / 'inspired by Yoruba' sashes etc.

I had a big scabbard a while ago:

https://www.antiquers.com/threads/yoruba-sword-beaded-scabbard.67450/

The beads on the OP's remind me of certain beaded Indonesian baskets:

 

It is possible that the difference in material of the beads could be due to its age. I don’t have many good examples of old beadwork to compare it to, so I can only guess. The depiction is most likely Yoruba as the style is consistent and birds have significant cultural importance to many.

 

The colors of the beadwork are typical, and it is not uncommon to see those golden, translucent beads on Yoruba objects.

It is nice to have at least some history for it, although third hand. I can see that the seed beads are irregular in shape, which is characteristic of the older beads made in Italy and Bohemia/Czechoslovakia. By the mid 20th century Japanese companies developed techniques to create much more uniform shapes. But beads can be saved and reused over time.

I am not familiar with any references that provide detailed information on a historical sequence of seed beads available in West Africa, and most comparative examples I have found are either not securely dated or assigned a broad period such as "late 19th - early 20th century".

If you want to pursue this, I can suggest searching the online collections of various anthropology museums, looking for objects with documented collection dates. Each museum's system is different, and takes some time to figure out, but here are a few links that might be fruitful:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection

https://collections-anthropology.fieldmuseum.org/

https://fowler.ucla.edu/digital-collections/

https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/anth/

https://www.penn.museum/collections/

https://collections.rom.on.ca/advancedsearch