A FACE FROM AN IMPORTANT IBIBIO HELMET MASK, with pierced crescent eyes beneath heavy lids and arched brows, full nose with flared nostrils, the parted lips with inset cane teeth, extensive erosion about the border and neck, crusty dark patina

Details
A FACE FROM AN IMPORTANT IBIBIO HELMET MASK, with pierced crescent eyes beneath heavy lids and arched brows, full nose with flared nostrils, the parted lips with inset cane teeth, extensive erosion about the border and neck, crusty dark patina
40cm. high
Exhibited
New York, 1980, illustrated as no.2

Lot Essay

This extraordinary fragment may well be a face from the same helmet mask of which Margaret Plass had another face, even more fragmentary (Elisofon and Fagg, 1958, p.143, no.187): the mask originally had three faces and Fagg suggests that one or more may have been covered in skin. If not from the same mask as the Plass example, this powerful image is certainly by the same hand.

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