African wooden masks and carvings seemed to be cropping up more often at the auctions I attend. I wondered if people were shedding their links to the motherland and re-decorating, or families were discarding leftovers from estates.
Regardless of their reasons, I seemed to be getting back into masks. I have a few masks and tabletop carvings that I picked up at shops some years ago, but I had gotten out of the habit of buying them. That changed about two weeks ago when I came across a carving that looked to be a woman’s face made of wood with a cone-shaped metal body. When I got the piece home I realized that it was a musical instrument.
At another auction a week ago, I saw two round wooden masks on a table, both identical, so smudged with dust and dirt and nicks that I figured they must be authentic. Not authentic as in antique or even vintage. I was hoping that they had been worn and danced in during rituals and ceremonies by the African peoples who had carved them.
I had heard or read somewhere that you should check to see if there were small holes on the side of a mask – the holes indicating that it was strung around someone’s head and had been actually used. I have no idea if that is true, but I shy away from carved pieces with no holes. There’s nothing wrong with buying inauthentic art you love to decorate your home, even masks – as long as you know what you’re getting.
The chances of my coming across an antique mask at auction are pretty slim. According to one article, importation of antique masks stopped in the 1970s and 1980s. Always curious, though, I wanted to know two things about the masks I bought for $11 each at auction: Where did they come from in Africa and were they actually used in rituals.
Where did they come from?
The mask is a Goli Kple Kple mask made by the Baule people of the Ivory Coast. It is one of four masks used in the Goli ceremony, and it is considered the lowliest. The ritual celebrates a harvest, a visit by dignitaries and the funerals of elders, according to several websites.
It is round (representing the sun) and flat, with red or black coloring, and topped with horns (representing the water buffalo). The mask is always worn by men – one site noted that red represented women and black, men – and it is a pass-through for supernatural forces.
The ceremonial dress is usually finished off with a goatskin covering on the back of the dancer and a raffia skirt. Here’s a Goli performer in full dress.
Were my masks actually used in rituals and ceremonies?
I decided to Google to find out how to determine authenticity. For African cultures, masks are not something you hang on a wall, but they are religious pieces for use in celebrations, funerals and initiations (the Goli Kple Kple mask apparently is not used for initiations). That meant that a used mask should show some wear and tear.
It apparently is hard to tell if a mask had been used in rituals. Some antique masks can appear new and some new masks can be aged by weather and water. Forgers sometimes use old wood to create fakes and will polish a fake to give it a patina of age, one article noted.
Here are some things to look for (none of these are conclusive):
1. Check the back of the mask for wear, including the holes for fastening the mask on the face. The wearer does a lot of moving in his dances, and contact between body and wood can leave sweat and oil stains.
2. Look for wear from forehead, cheeks, chins and noses. The mask should look like it’s been handled.
3. Smell the mask for the hint of smoke odor that may have come from a mask being used near ritual fires or stored in houses heated by wood.
4. Look for evidence of the use of wooden or local tools (as in an awl instead of a mechanical drill) for such things as the holes in the mask.
5. Check for discoloration in the paint. As it ages, the paint darkens or it could develop thin cracks or crazing.
6. Signs of fakes: smooth painted faces, no holes to attach raffia or other parts of the ceremonial dress, new paint and obvious use of new tools.
6. The best advice: Attend auctions, read books and catalogs, and go to museums to see what the real thing looks like. Here’s a 19th-century Goli Kple Kple in the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
I examined my two masks very closely and decided that they were not authentic. They likely never got near a ritual and were made to be sold as street art or tourist art. There were no telltale signs of wear from usage. The backs were still smooth from the carvings, even though the masks were dusty and dirty. The holes were cleanly made.
That apparently doesn’t matter much, because I found some reproduction Kple Kple masks similar to mine selling for up to $500 on the web. Masks don’t have to be old to be of value, as one site noted. At least, I now know what to look for.
