Browse Items (36 total)

This tear drop-shaped face mask is made of carved wood with a varied dark brown patina. The hair is a wrapped fiber braid and the ears have twisted copper earrings. Attached to the chin are four brass bells and an animal tooth. The back of the mask…

This kneeling woman is wearing a necklace with a pendant, has coffee bean eyes and beautifully carved and elaborate hair, colored with bluing. There is a baby on her back. The figure is made of carved wood with a dark brown patina with blue pigment.…

A cylindrical figure, like this example, has an upturned nose—one of its distinctive features. Objects of this type are thought to be used by the diviner in ceremonies of protection and fertility. Such a figure can be multifunctional in its capacity…

This unusual mask of a man’s face is made of carved wood with dark brown vegetable pigment and white koalin. His hair is done as a three-part coiffure. The mask is worn by a person acting as the tribe’s police or to frighten an enemy.

Carved wood with dark brown vegetable pigment patina with white kaolin in the form of a rounded monkey’s face with minimal features and concave white face, round protruding eyes, elongated nose, diminutive mouth with 4 lines of scarification…

This male figure with a rounded belly has rings around his neck, arms, waist and ankles and has an open hole in his back for inserting one-of-a-kind object is hand-made terra cotta with a dark brown vegetable patina and red camwood powder accents.

This carved wood figure features two pairs of male and female figures seated one above the other. The male figures are on the right and both have beards.

This totem has a male figure standing on the right, and a female figure on the left, with upturned open palms. They are standing on top of a block-like post with carved relief ancestral faces. The totem reminds a couple that cultural and tribal…

Baule people are prolific carvers. A statue is usually on a base with legs bent slightly, and hands at rest on the abdomen to communicate a feeling of peacefulness. The coiffure is generally detailed. The statue represents the spirit of the bush and…

The social organization of the Fang people is structured around the family and individulas having common ancestry. Each family possessed a reliquary box referred to as a Byen, and this box was kept by the eldest man in the family known as Esa.…