mask
- Museum number
- Am1976,03.15
- Description
-
Human wooden face mask, carved in one piece, painted grey/blue on the face, with red lips, nostrils and splashes on the cheeks. Circular ring around the edge.
- Production date
- 1886 (?)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 36 centimetres
-
Width: 39 centimetres
-
Depth: 21 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- In his accompanying notes (Eth. Doc. 1225), Inverarity theorises that this mask was not in fact collected by Boas in the village of Bilxula, but instead came into his possession in Berlin in 1886. The collection with which it was exhibited in Berlin in 1922 was gathered by a man named Captain Adrian Jacobsen, who made a voyage to the Northwest Coast in the 1880s and in 1886 exhibited artefacts and people he had brought back to Germany at a special show in Berlin. Boas is known to have attended this show and made a study of the Bella Coola people on "display" there, and Inverarity suggests that this is where he may have acquired the mask and perhaps other pieces.
- Location
- On display (G26/dc7)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
1999 25 Jun-Present, BM Room 26; Gallery of North America, Case: "The Northwest Coast of America"
1976 27 Aug-1978 Oct, Museum of Mankind; The Inverarity Collection: Indian Art from the North West Coast of America
- Acquisition date
- 1976
- Acquisition notes
- This object was purchased from Robert Bruce Inverarity in 1976. In his accompanying notes (Eth. Doc. 1225), he records that he purchased the object in 1950 from the Kende Galleries in New York, which were selling the piece as part of the estate of the collector Frederick Knize.
The Kende Galleries catalogue for the Knize sale (November 11th, 1950, No.408) lists this object as Lot 194 (illustrated on p.59) "American Indian Painted Wood Mask. Tlingit. Large convex mask representing the face of the sun, painted gray, the features accented with red and white, surrounded by a red border. Height 14 inches."
Knize had probably acquired the object from a 1945 sale of material formerly displayed in the Vienna Museum, although prior to 1933 it was known to be on display in the Berlin Museum. In Berlin, the mask was recorded as having been collected at the Bella Coola village of Bilxula by Franz Boas during the 1890s, although Inverarity suggests that the mask may actually have been acquired by Boas in Berlin from a group of Bella Coola brought to the city in 1886.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Am1976,03.15
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: Item 15 (Inverarity collection number)