In depth reading
Not what it is worth. Not whether it will bring you luck. Whether it was ever danced, and what happened to it before it reached you.
Most African masks in private hands were made to be sold. A smaller number were made to be worn.
Telling them apart is not mystical. The object tells you, if you know where it keeps its records.
A mask that was danced was held in the mouth or strapped to a head, and it carries that. There is wear on the bite bar where teeth closed on it, season after season. The attachment points for the costume are stretched or torn where the raffia pulled. The patina is uneven, heavy where hands went and light where they did not, because a person carried it and a person is not a machine. There are old repairs, made by somebody who needed it working again by the next festival, not by somebody making it presentable for a buyer.
Inside, there may be residue. Kaolin. Soot. The remains of libation. A mask that lived in a shrine picked up the shrine.
And there is the question of how it left. Some masks are decommissioned before they go, deliberately and by someone with the standing to do it. Some were simply taken. The object often carries the difference, and so does the story that came with it, if there was one.
None of that is guesswork. It is looking carefully at a thing, and knowing what you are looking at.
What this is not.
This is a cultural and material reading of an object. It is not an authentication and it is not a valuation. It will not tell you what your mask is worth, it will not certify it for an insurer or an auction house, and it does not predict anything about your life or your future.
If that is what you need, you need a licensed appraiser, and I will say so rather than take your money.
Readings start at around sixty dollars for a single mask. The price rises with the number of objects and with how much work the object needs.
Every one is quoted individually. Send me what you have and I will tell you what it will cost before anything begins. If I cannot help you, I will say that instead, and it will not cost you anything to find out.
Email michael@sevics.africa with your photographs. Front, side, angled from above, and the inside. Read the photography notes on the identifier page first if you have not already.
Tell me anything you know about how the object came to you, even if it is only that it was your grandfather's and nobody remembers more than that. That sentence is often worth more than it sounds.
Not sure what you have yet? Start with the free identifier.