1913.39.1

Collection type

Object

Description

Carved wooden mask with long pendant fringe of fibre. The face of the mask is coated with red and black pigments. [CW [OPS move] 20/9/2016]

Geographical reference

Nigeria

Africa > Western Africa > Nigeria

Central Nigeria Benue River Valley Middle Benue Yola Province Yakoko

Cultural groups

Mumuye

Person

Field collector Henry Mountifort Dillon

PRM source Kathleen Nora Dillon

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1907

Date collected

December 1907

Acquisition information

Donated: 1913

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Material Plant Fibre, Process Carved

Dimensions

Width: max 670 mm, Length: max 1760 mm approx, Height: max 260 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1913.39.1

Research and responses

Marla Berns, from UCLA, and Richard Fardon, from the University of London, examined this mask on 20 June 2007. They identified it as being from the Mumuye group of the Yola Province, Yakoko. (Jeremy Coote entered this information into the relevant fields of the database on the day of the visit.) [AR 2/7/2007]

For a brief account of Mumuye masquerade and an illustration of a mask in the collections of the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles (along with a photograph of a mask in performance), see 'A Mumuye Mask', by Arnold Rubin, in I Am Not Myself: The Art of African Masquerade, edited by Herbert M. Cole (Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, Monograph Series, Number Twenty-Six), Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles (1985), pp. 98-99. (Photocopy in RDF.) [JC 27 8 2010]

See also Fusions: Masquerades and Thought Style East of the Niger-Benue Confluence, West Africa (Afriscopes: Illustrated Arguments about African Culture), by Richard Fardon (London: Saffron, 2007). [JC 27 8 2010]

Associated publications

Illustrated in colour as Figure 10.24 on page 330 of 'Hybrids: Therianthropic Horizontal Masquerades from the Middle Benue', by Richard Fardon, in Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley, edited by Marla C. Berns, Richard Fardon, and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, 2011), pp. 317-53. Caption (same page) reads: '10.24 Masquerade | Mumuye peoples, before 1907 | Wood, plant fiber | H: 176 cm | Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1913.39.1 | Image: (c) Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford | Provenance: Captured During British Military Raid on Yakoko, 1907; Miss Kathleen Dillon before 1913 (Not in Exhibition) | This Mumuye masquerade, complete with dress, was the earliest to enter a museum collection. It has characteristics that are intermediate between Mumuye and Jukun horizontal mask forms. Note how its horns are raised to a horizontal plane above its cap, and there is a prominent knob at the front where its horns meet that probably, given its striations, evokes a hair knot. This knob occupies the same position as it would on a Jukun male Aku mask, where it would, however, represent a human nose.' [JC 6 10 2011]

Search terms: Mask, Punishment and Torture, Religion, Ritual and Ceremonial, Religious Object, Ceremonial Object