190706 Oud masker met katoen - Hout - Tribal used - Hoektand - Gabon

Tribal used Very expressive african mask with Raffia from the Fang, Gabon.
This type of mask is used for entertainment of the spectators on festive occasions.
Hand carved from a single piece of wood, with color pigments, raffia fibres.
Height: 36 cm - only the wooden mask.

The people that are called “Fang” in the geographic or ethnographic literature number 800,000 and constitute a vast mosaic of village communities, established in a large zone of Atlantic equatorial Africa comprising Cameroon, continental equatorial Guinea and nearly the whole north of Gabon, on the right bank of the Ogowe River.
Historically the Fang were itinerant, and it is relatively recently that they have settled into this broad area. The migratory existence of the Fang prohibited the creation of ancestral shrines at gravesites. Instead, the remains of the important dead, in the form of the skull and other bones, were carried from place to place in a cylindrical bark box.