Mask dancers with such chimpanzee masks, hooked sticks, and wearing broad full-body costumes, perform at dance feasts in the villages of the Dan-Kran to provoke and ‘heat up’ the public with wild jumping and coarse jokes.
The chimpanzee mask offered here is made of lightweight, light-coloured wood and dyed black. It shows the typical form of these ‘kagle masks’: the semicircular and flat forehead protruding forwards, with a diagonal line at the border, beneath this, deep-set, slit eyes (here with three holes each for a former metal framing), a broad nose between protruding cheekbones at the sides, and a large, open mouth with broad pouting lips. Peculiarities of this special object are the three holes beneath both eyes, intended for an earlier metal outline (now lost), the relief band originally coloured in white on the bridge of the nose, the red dyed tongue in the open mouth and the relief bands on the inside of the thick lips. Also the exterior sides of both cheeks display relief decoration.
A characteristic, old piece, with a small fracture on the right eye and a few broken fastening eyelets for the mask costume on the back rim, through protracted use. Colour scuffing on the edges of the mask on the front and back. Nevertheless, with very good usage patina, especially at the back on the inside.
Height: c. 30 cm; width: 15 cm. Between c. 1900 and the first third of the 20th century.

Provenance: According to information from the consignor, it was collected at the site of origin by her grandfather, a hydraulic engineer who worked in Africa since the late 1940s, and brought home. Since then: Austrian private collection. (ME)



Lit.: ‘Die Kunst der Dan’ by Eberhard Fischer & Hans Himmelheber, Rietberg Museum, Zurich, ill. 78, 79, 80.