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Thread Owner
Sorry not the greatest photos and I hope these aren’t related to animal cruelty but are these important or junk. They might be from travel. What would I do with them
Masks
- Thread starter Sitadevi
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Your father was quite some collector wasn’t he?
All of the masks look to be African, although there’s only one that I specifically recognise without further research. The second one. It’s a “Kpeliye’e” mask from the Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) with cultural affinity to the Senufo people. The double-faced ones are called “Yêchikpleyégué”
https://www.senufo-art.com/2017/06/30/genres-of-the-kpelié-the-double-faced-mask/
Masks like this have been commonly sold at markets to tourists and for the “collector market” since the beginning of the 20th Century and are still sold today. The earlier ones tend to be more faithful in terms of construction methods and materials used, although they never actually saw any ritual use. The earlier ones are commensurately more desirable/valuable, but It would take some close examination to estimate exactly how old yours are since they’re habitually artificially aged before sale.
Artisans in the Côte d’Ivoire have been major suppliers of these masks to the market for some time, producing items that relate to their own cultural people, copies of masks from other African cultures, and ‘generic’ masks that don’t really belong to any particular culture.
For the more modern ones, even if you bargain hard on a market you may well find that you’ve ‘overpaid’ relative to any resale value. If you’re selling, fleabay would be as good a route as any, although Etsy now seems to be the place to ask ridiculous prices. Take whatever you can get for them would be my advice.
All of the masks look to be African, although there’s only one that I specifically recognise without further research. The second one. It’s a “Kpeliye’e” mask from the Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) with cultural affinity to the Senufo people. The double-faced ones are called “Yêchikpleyégué”
https://www.senufo-art.com/2017/06/30/genres-of-the-kpelié-the-double-faced-mask/
Masks like this have been commonly sold at markets to tourists and for the “collector market” since the beginning of the 20th Century and are still sold today. The earlier ones tend to be more faithful in terms of construction methods and materials used, although they never actually saw any ritual use. The earlier ones are commensurately more desirable/valuable, but It would take some close examination to estimate exactly how old yours are since they’re habitually artificially aged before sale.
Artisans in the Côte d’Ivoire have been major suppliers of these masks to the market for some time, producing items that relate to their own cultural people, copies of masks from other African cultures, and ‘generic’ masks that don’t really belong to any particular culture.
For the more modern ones, even if you bargain hard on a market you may well find that you’ve ‘overpaid’ relative to any resale value. If you’re selling, fleabay would be as good a route as any, although Etsy now seems to be the place to ask ridiculous prices. Take whatever you can get for them would be my advice.
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