West African mask?

[SnakemanBill]

Greetings!
ive had this mask that I bought at a yard sale a few years ago. I think it’s West Africans but I’m not positive about that. Are there any mask experts here that can enlighten me? It’s about 19 inches wide and 18 inches high.

 

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[SnakemanBill]

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[EnvoyToTheMolePeople]

I'm not even remotely an expert, but I heard that a lot of these were made by setting fires on the inside and scraping the ash out, kind of like a dugout canoe. If this was the method used, you are supposed to be able to smell smoke on the inside.

 

[Red-Coat]

It appears to me to be stylistically copied from the masks of the Luba (Louba, Baluba, Balouba) people of the Congo, but probably not made there. These kinds of masks range across the spectrum: Authentically made and have seen ritual use / Authentically made in recent times as quality pieces of art, but not for ritual use / Modern mass-produced in borrowed styles for tourists as souvenirs.

Here are some higher quality authentically-produced art items, but these have not seen ritual use. Those that have will show signs of wear on the inside and around any features that acted as attachment points.



In my opinion, yours sits at the mass-produced souvenir end of the spectrum and mostly these very colourful (sometimes beaded) round masks with slit-eyes originate from Ghana. The National Museum of Ghana has this to say about African masks in general:

As African masks are largely appreciated by Europeans, they are widely commercialized and sold in most tourist-oriented markets and shops in Africa (as well as "ethnic" shops in the Western World). As a consequence, the traditional art of mask-making has gradually ceased to be a privileged, status-related practice, and mass production of masks has become widespread. While, in most cases, commercial masks are (more or less faithful) reproductions of traditional masks, this connection is weakening over time, as the logics of mass-production make it harder to identify the actual geographical and cultural origins of the masks found in such venues as curio shops and tourist markets. For example, the Okahandja market in Namibia mostly sells masks that are produced in Zimbabwe (as they are cheaper and more easily available than local masks), and, in turn, Zimbabwean mask-makers reproduce masks from virtually everywhere in Africa rather than from their own local heritage.