Calabash mask

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Description

pumpkin, modelled with reduced facial features, entirely covered with with dark red cloth, markings in black pigment, coiffure of cord material, spread with black substance, inserted wooden splinters forming the teeth, chin and knob-shaped projection underneath, sacrificial traces (feathers on the forehead), slightly dam., missing part at the lower rim;
this mask type remains uninvestigated. It is usually known as “egigun”, evidently a garbling of the Oyo term “egungun”. “Egungun” masks served to commemorate the ancestors.

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Comparing literature

Reginald Groux, Masques Ekiti - Visages de l'au-delà, Montreuil, 2010 Dagan, Esther A., The African Calabash, New York 1988, p. 172 ff

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