Old Beautiful Yaure Staff – Collected in Beomi, Côte d’Ivoire

Height: 51.0 cm (approx. 20.1 inches) on a custom mount. Weight: 800 g (approx. 28.2 oz). Glossy patina, with signs of ritual use and age.

This Yaure staff from central Côte d’Ivoire is a ceremonial object associated with authority, mediation, and spiritual legitimacy. Typically carved from wood, such staffs are distinguished by figurative finials reflecting Yaure ideals of social maturity and controlled self‑possession.

In community settings, the staff operates as a visible marker of office, carried by chiefs or elders during gatherings and ceremonies. It authorizes speech and decision‑making, functioning less as a tool and more as a symbol that embodies sanctioned leadership. The figurative elements may invoke ancestral or spiritual forces, linking present authority to cosmological continuity.

References

• Susan Mullin Vogel, Art and Life in Africa.
• Denis M. Warren, The Akan Worldview.

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