Visitors to the Wick's home in San Diego were entranced by the simple form of the whitened horned headdress there, sublime in its purity, the quintessence of abstract art. But it has perplexed authorities. Réné Bravmann thought it could be from Northern Ghana, a "Bedu" or "Simma", but the reverse of the Wick's crest is carved with an inverted bowl to rest on the top of the head, whereas the flat masks from Bravmann's area usually have an inverted U for retention. Marla Berns of UCSB kindly trawled the Arnold Rubin Archives without a definitive result, and Sidney Kasfir reported no sightings of similar carvings during her travels among the Tiv and Idoma.

William Fagg's response, when shown the headdress in 1976, was that it could be from the Idoma, and if not from them, then from a small group on the Upper Benue or adjacent Plateau, related to the Mama who share the cap-like retention form. Now his good friend, Roy Sieber, has graciously sent us a copy of a note he had made in 1958, on an akatokpa he had been shown in the Southern Igala village of Eteh, where its function could loosely be translated as a "whipping mask". He informs us that it was a secondary mask which accompanied the important mask, brought out to guard the fields "when the groundnuts were ripening". It is not identical but similar enough to the make Southern Igala the most plausible attribution for this mysterious carving.

Mr. T. Tibbs, was the Director of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art from 1960 through 1970. He acquired the piece in 1972.