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Details
LOT 2358
African Wooden Cermonial Face Mask
WE TRIBE, EARLY-MID 20TH CENTURY A.D.
11 1/4 in. (1.15 kg, face long: 28.5 cm).
Carved with tubular eyes, a wide mouth with metal plate teeth, a broad nose and raffia hair around the whole mask. [No Reserve]
Provenance
From Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia, West Africa.
From an old Newbury, UK, ethnographic collection.
From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.
Footnotes
Masks are owned by families and used by individual lineage members in contexts of social control, boy’s circumcision camps, and entertainment. Most We masks were created to frighten with the gaping jaws and tubular eyes. Modern ethnology puts the Wobe and Guere together under the name We, despite the fact that the people themselves use the old names.
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