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1935.73.2

Face mask from a Okorosia play. [ZM 08/04/2013]

On display

1935.73.2

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

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Collection type
Object
Description
Face mask from a Okorosia play. [ZM 08/04/2013]
Long description
Face mask from a Okorosia play. Carved wooden mask with human facial features. Holes at the eyes and mouth. Carved projecting features for the ears, nose and eyebrows. The general colour is of stained brown wood, with white paint around the eyes and in a vertical stripe up the forehead. There are three holes along the edge of the mask, one behind each ear and the other at the top. Carved roughly on the inner side. [ZM 08/04/2013]
Geographical reference
Nigeria
Africa > Western Africa > Nigeria
Southern Nigeria Imo State Eziama and Orlo village groups
Cultural groups
Igbo
Person
Field collector Gwilym Iwan Jones
PRM source Gwilym Iwan Jones
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1935
Date collected
By 1935
Acquisition information
Loaned: 1935
Materials and processes
Material Wood Plant, Material Pigment, Process Carved, Process Painted, Process Stained, Process Perforated
Dimensions
Height x Width x Depth 250 x 160 x 85 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1935.73.2
Research and responses

For the donor's description of the Okorosia play in the 1930s when this mask entered the Museum collections see Jones, G.I., 'Okorosia' (by 'Daji'), Nigerian Field Volume 3 No. 4, pp 175-177 (October 1934). Written on this mask is akatakpuru, which according to Jones' descriptions on pp 175 and 177 of this particular masked character in the masquerades appears to terrifying in nature and is armed with a switch, which is used to drive back the watching crowds.[ZM 02/05/2013]

For a description of the Okorosia masquerade (also known as Okoroshi, Okorosh or Okorosi) during the 1980s see pp 186-204 in Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos, by Herbert M. Cole and Chike C. Aniakor (Los Angeles: University of California Museum of Cultural History, 1984). [ZM 10/07/2013]

In the G.I. Jones photographic archive at Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), Cambridge, is a black and white negative (identification number N.73985.GIJ) of this mask or a very similar mask, the one in the MAA image still has a tuft of hair on the chin and is described on the MAA photographic catalogue as follows: 'A documentation photograph of a fierce dark face mask used in Okorosi masquerades. The wooden mask is rectangular shaped at the top and rounded at the bottom, with a high forehead, square eyes, nose, protruding ears and a linear slit mouth and a rounded jaw and chin line; on the bottom of the chin is black hair. The mask is dark but painted white in the centre of the forehead and around the eyes.' [ZM 26/11/2013]

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