Elephant Tusk Carved with Figures in Relief

The staff has long been a symbol of authority and power in Western culture. Contact between Europe and Africa transplanted both the form and its meaning to Africa during the European Renaissance, and the African staff took on new forms of decoration. By the mid-nineteenth century, African craftsmen were also carving ivory tusks specifically for the export market with horizontal bands of narrative figures spiraling up the form. These were based on African side-blown horns, which had been carved with similar decoration, but in the works for export the function of a horn has been lost in favor of the value to Westerners of the ivory, which was traded along the same routes as slaves.