New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several masking and figure-carving traditions documented in this book treat a finished sculpture as a fixed, permanent object. Teke fetish figures, spread across both Congo Republics and Gabon, worked differently: a figure’s power was…
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several masking traditions documented in this book carry a clear, unbroken line from sacred origin to present-day use. The Duma, or Aduma, boatmen of Gabon’s Ogooue River, present a harder case: their masks are…
Not the same recycled eight sentences. Twenty specific, checkable facts about African masks, from bite bar wear to what Britain took in 1897.
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most masking traditions documented in this book maintain a whole wardrobe of mask types, each built for a distinct spirit, rite, or society. The Landuman of Guinea are known to use exactly one: the…
Kuba, Songye, Lega, Hemba, Yombe. A guide to Congo masks, what each tradition was built to do, and how to tell them apart on sight.
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several masking traditions documented in this book carry names that describe what a group does or where it lives. The We of Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia carry a name that describes something closer to…
Face, helmet, crest, shoulder, structure. The five types of African masks, what each one was for, and how to tell which you are holding.
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Several masking traditions documented in this book describe communities whose fortunes rose and fell with outside trade. Few trace that arc as cleanly as the Zombo, who broke away from the Kongo kingdom in…
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most masking traditions documented in this book carry at least a working consensus on what their masks were for, even when the deeper symbolism stays contested. The Boa of the northern Democratic Republic of…
Wood, brass, ivory, hide, cowries and kaolin. What African masks are made of tells you who made them, for whom, and whether they ever danced.
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Many masking traditions documented in this book treat individual masks as interchangeable instances of a single type. The Vuvi of central Gabon organized theirs differently: each bwiti association mask apparently carried its own specific…
Ijele, Agbogho Mmuo, Gelede, Egungun, Ekpo. A working guide to Nigerian masks, who made them and what each masquerade was built to do.