Òdìgbà ifá (diviner’s necklace)

Beads have been the quintessential medium of Yoruba devotional expression on both sides of the Atlantic. A glassmaking workshop produced beads at Ile-Ife as early as the eleventh century. Long associated with the bounty of Olókun, goddess of the sea, they exemplify dán, the aesthetic quality of catching the light. While beaded regalia also incorporated locally sourced jasper and carnelian stones, or coral and cowries acquired through maritime trade, by the nineteenth century, glass beads manufactured in Europe had been embraced for the dramatic expansion of the chromatic palette they afford. The color schemes bead artists apply to crowns, sheaths, and other objects commissioned by priests and high-ranking officials are carefully selected to express the temperament, of specific deities or òrìṣàs. Painstaking sequencing of these lustrous orbs is at once understood as a trance-inducing, meditative creative process and as a metaphor for the unity and complexity of the cosmos.