Original African Crafts

In a break of tradition for this website, I'm offering a few selected African Crafts of high quality. I realize that to the purists of African paintings this might be blasphemy! But I could no longer ignore the wondrous offerings I came across while living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. I will try to keep this at a minimum, and see how it goes.

There are a lot of African crafty-type internet sites, but very few in the States that offer reasonable prices for these 'imported' products. These items are not 'drech', or mass- produced touristy things - they are beautiful original crafts that are both unique and hand-made.

If you have ever been to Kenya you will find these wire sculptures very familiar. On every street corner they are being hawked by venders and street kids trying to make a buck to stay alive or to buy some glue. It's difficult to avert your eyes when they flash these detailed and incredibly accurate wire sculptures in front of you. I have collected one of almost every variety (motorcycle, Land Cruiser, Earth Mover, airplane, bus, helicopter), and brought back a couple extra for the website! Click HERE to purchase!

8 May 2003 - My wife, Liz, brought back three very authentic and wonderful Maasai necklaces from a trip to Kenya. They are now posted below...

The Maasai are the local tribe of Nairobi, Kenya. With the until-recent lack of rains in Maasai-land, it was not unusual to see a Maasai herding his cows and goats through the city. This parade of cattle can cause quite a traffic snarl. When asked why he is tying-up the traffic, he responded by asking, "Is this not my land?" Learn more about the Maasai

Not only an incredibly proud people, the Maasai are also highly skilled at adorning themselves with intricately beaded items from head to toe.

The Wedding necklace is an example of this skill. While the sizes vary greatly, a necklace of this size takes up to a month to make as each bead is individually fastened onto a piece of animal hide.

I sold out of my original necklaces and have recently acquired three more! They are very 'fresh', you can tell by the odor - not bad, very much like milk and frankincense - wonderful, in fact!


Item: Maasai Wedding Necklace 3 Dimensions: Approx 10" across, hanging to 30" Medium: Beads on leather with metallic dangles on necklace and cowry shells Price: $110 Purchase, or Make an Offer!	Item: Maasai Wedding Necklace 4 Dimensions: Approx 11" across, hanging to 30" Medium: Beads on leather with cowry shells on necklace Price: $120 Purchase, or Make an Offer!	Item: Maasai Wedding Necklace 5 Dimensions: Approx 11" across, hanging to 32" Medium: Beads on leather with cowry shells Price: $120 Purchase, or Make an Offer!

Since they were first visited in the 15th century, the extraordinary bronzes of the Benin kingdom (what is now Nigeria), exhibit a sophistication and style that has astonished the western world ever since. Following a punitive expedition in 1897, which stripped the city of Benin of many precious objects, their work was brought to Europe causing a great sensation.

The people of Benin, called Bini, are descendants of the Ife, also known for their remarkable bronzes. Almost all Benin art was created to honor their king, or Oba, whose ancestral family has reigned since the 15th century. Though similar to older work, styles have changed over the years - rest assured, these are all 20th century pieces.

Each is still hand sculpted using the 'lost wax process', and then cast in bronze. Because they are handmade, each is unique.

The leopard has both whiskers and fangs, while his body is covered with engraved rings - tail arcing over his back. The leopards were used in cleansing rituals, water being poured from the mouth of the leopard onto the Oba's hands.

I have more Bronzes! If you are serious and interested in seeing them, let me know!

If sculpture is the projection of one's thoughts into three dimensions, then the African continent has produced many of the greatest sculptors of all time, even though no single name has ever been passed down.

The mask was traditionally used in Africa in the majority of ceremonies: fertility or initiation rites, religious or funeral celebrations, but also theatrical or comic performances often linked to the deepest ethnic myths. The mask confers on the person wearing it - for the duration of the ceremony - the essence and the powers of the spirits or ancestors it symbolizes. Secret societies, almost always composed of adult males, are simultaneously repositories and creators. The wearers of masks, sworn to secrecy, are subject to constraints and taboos which protect them from the dangerous magic powers of these objects.

This mask has the common characteristics of a Chokwe mask: Expression, the slit-eyed straight-forward appearance of watchfulness. Scarification, most noticeably on the forehead, cheeks and below the mouth. Attention to coiffure, strikingly carved into the wood. And the raffia surround which adds to the appearance of the mask, while hiding the person wearing it.

This is an unusual mask as it is small, possibly used for childhood initiation ceremonies or as a prototype for larger masks. However, the size is easily made-up in the attention to detail and the precise nature of the craftsmanship.

I have more masks of different origin and variations! If you are serious and interested in seeing them, let me know!

Ashanti Sash - Made in West Africa, probably Nigeria

A wonderful product of the Yoruba people is the hanging sash, or belt. Intricately beaded, they are stitched into a padded cloth backing that gives the faces and other animals, in this case a scorpion, a raised three-dimensional look. Larger beads and cowry shells are hung on the edges adding to the elaborate design of the sash. Learn more about the Yoruba

At the 2000 Grammy awards, Carlos Santana used a beaded Yoruba sash as his guitar strap.

Item: Yoruba Beaded Sash

Dimensions: 48" x 6" (122 x 15cm)

Medium: Beads on textile, cowry shells

Price: $190 Or, Make an offer!

*** 2002 SALE *** Make an Offer! Mention Artist, Exact Painting Title, and what it's worth to you - I'll get back to you immediately with either an acceptance or a counter offer. You've got nothing to lose!
See the FAQ page to learn more! Yes! I want to: MAKE AN OFFER!

More on the Yoruba:

The Yoruba People, of whom there are more than twenty-five million, occupy the southwestern corner of Nigeria along the Dahomey border and extends into Dahomey itself. To the east and north the Yoruba culture reaches its approximate limits in the region of the Niger River. However ancestral cultures directly related to the Yoruba once flourished well north of the Niger.

Portuguese explorers "discovered" the Yoruba cities and kingdoms in the fifteenth century, but cities such as Ife and Benin, among others, had been standing at their present sites for at least five hundred years before the European arrival. Archeological evidence indicates that a technologically and artistically advanced, proto-Yoruba (Nok), were living somewhat north of the Niger in the first millennium B.C., and they were then already working with iron.

Ifa theology states that the creation of humankind arose in the sacred city of Ile Ife where Oduduwa created dry land from water. Much later on an unknown number of Africans migrated from Mecca to Ile Ife. At this point the Eastern Africans and Western Africans synergized.

Ife was the first of all Yoruba cities. Oyo and Benin came later and grew and expanded as a consequence of their strategic locations at a time when trading became prosperous. Ife, unlike Benin and Oyo, never developed onto a true kingdom. But though it remained a city-state it had paramount importance to Yoruba's as the original sacred city and the dispenser of basic religious thought.

Until relatively recent times the Yoruba's did not consider themselves a single people, but rather as citizens of Oyo, Benin, Yagba and other cities, regions or kingdoms. These cities regarded Lagos and Owo, for example, as foreign neighbors, and the Yoruba kingdoms warred not only against the Dahomeans but also against each other. The name Yoruba was applied to all these linguistically and culturally related peoples by their northern neighbors, the Hausas.

The old Yoruba cities typically were urban centers with surrounding farmlands that extended outward as much as a dozen miles or more. Both Benin and Oyo are said to have been founded by Ife rulers or descendants of Ife rulers. Benin derived its knowledge of brass casting directly from Ife, and the religious system of divining called Ifa spread from Ife not only throughout the Yoruba country but to other West African cultures as well. A common Yoruba belief system dominated the region from the Niger, where it flows in an easterly direction, all the way to the Gulf of Guinea in the south.

It is no accident that the Yoruba cultural influence spread across the Atlantic to the Americas. European slave hunters violently captured and marched untold millions of Africans to their demise on over crowded slave ships bound for the Americas. Slave wars launched by the kingdom of Dahomey against some of the Yoruba kingdoms, and slave wars between the Yoruba's themselves made war casualty Africans available for transportation to the Americas. Yoruba slaves were sent to British, French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World, and in a number of these places Yoruba traditions survived strongly. In Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and Trinidad, Yoruba religious rites, beliefs, music and myths is evident even at this late day. In Haiti the Yoruba's were generally called Anagos. Afro-Haitian religious activities give Yoruba rites and beliefs an honored place, and the pantheon includes numerous deities of Yoruba origin. In Brazil, Yoruba religious activities are called Anago or Shango, and in Cuba they are designated Lucumi.

Slavery in the United States was quite different from other colonized regions. In the U.S. chattel type slavery was the means where the language and culture was whipped and beat out of the African captives. In the U.S. throughout the Diaspora, the African generally received the death penalty for practicing his or her birthright. Today the religion has undergone a phenomenal surge in popularity and interest. Santeria, the adaptation of Yoruba and Ifa with Catholicism, came to the states first with Puerto Ricans in the forties and fifties and then with the flood of Cuban refugees in the sixties. In all of these places mentioned above, the pantheon of major Yoruba deities has survived virtually intact, along with a complex of rites, beliefs, music, dances and myths of Yoruba origin.

In resent years, availability of attainable air travel has enabled African Americans to go back to the essence from which this great culture derived (Africa) and gather the information needed to teach and assist others. Places like Oyotunji village in Beaufort South Carolina, DOYA (Descendants of the Yoruba in America) foundation in Cleveland OH, Ile Ori Ifa Temple in Atlanta GA, and African Paridise in Grffin GA where Yoruba culture and religion is still practiced, are just a few of many locations that offer a place to reclaim the religion of self awareness, inner strength, inner peace and unlimited power for our evolution.

Many thanks for this article compiled by Fa 'Lofin Back to Ashanti Sash

More on the Maasai:

The Maasai people are a tribe who live partly in southern Kenya but mainly in northern Tanzania. They range from Lake Turkana down through Ngorongoro. Currently there are over 377,000 Maasai, but the population is declining fast. This disappearance is mostly due to a clash both economically (farming) and culturally with the advancing Kenyan and Tanzanian peoples. One quarter of the Maasai people have already been converted to Christianity. The rest still follow the traditional religion. The traditional Maasai religion worships cattle and revolves around the God of the sky, Engai, or more commonly Enkai. To the Maasai any pursuit other than a pastoral one is considered demeaning to Enkai. The Maasai feel that each new day is a significant change in their lives.

The Maasai got their name after their language; Maa. It is an African language that has no written form. The Maasai have four age grades: junior warrior, senior warrior, junior elder, and senior elder. The Maasai men can marry once they reach the senior warrior age group. This age lasts for about fifteen years. Once a person has been a senior elder for around fifteen years, they are eligible to become the Oloiboni, tribal leader, soothsayer, priest, and prophet.

One way the Maasai are unique is their application of red ochre all through their bodies and hair. The women of the tribes wear many coils around their necks as well as some on their arms. The Maasai, both warrior and elder alike, wear earrings through the large loops in their ears. The Maasai are nomadic most of the year; following the herds and rains across the Serengeti/Maasai Mara area. The Maasai live in kraals, small huts made out of clay and cow dung clusters. The women are treated as equals of the men in the Maasai culture. They are the ones who make the kraals. The village children are content to simply play games with pebbles, dung, and berries. One of the traditional rites of passage for the Maasai boys and girls becoming a junior warriors is a customary circumcision ritual.

For food, the Maasai eat mostly meat. Their drink mainly includes the milk and blood of the animals. The Maasai are very much like the Native Americans in that they have a great respect for their food and feel that they need to use all of the animals that they have slain. The following parts are used these ways: its urine is used for medicinal purposes, the dung to plaster and seal their houses, the horn is used to make containers, the hooves for ornaments, and the hide for everything from clothing and shoes to bedding. Often times, a Maasai warrior will go out armed with nothing but a spear to kill a lion.

A few Maasai have turned to cultivation and grow maize and barley for Kenya Breweries. Although some of the Maasai's traditions are being washed away by "western" customs, many of their traditional practices still are being utilized. Unfortunately, these customs may not be continued if their population continues to be diminished.

Many thanks for this article compiled by Scott Sanderson Back to Maasai Neckwear