Mask dancers with such chimpanzee masks, hooked sticks, and wearing broad costumes of palm fibre skirts and cloths, 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 present chimpanzee mask of the Dan-Kran is carved out of lightweight, light-coloured wood and was originally dyed black. However, this mask has lost its earlier colouring due to age and weathering, and the original black is now only visible on deeply recessed areas around and beneath the eyes, and on the nose. Nevertheless, it conforms formally completely to the ‘classical’ type: with flat, semicircular forehead protruding forwards and with two transverse lines at the edges, small triangular eyes, and a large broad nose between square-shaped projecting cheekbones. The protruding, open mouth with its wide, pouting lips belongs characteristically to the appearance of a chimpanzee mask of the Dan-Kran.
On both outer surfaces of its accentuated cheeks, this mask displays simple, linear reliefs, and above its thick upper lip five holes for the attachment of a moustache. Two of the fastening eyelets for the mask costume, on the back rim of the mask, are broken due to long use, the other holes display noticeable traces of wear. A visibly very old piece with very good, shiny usage patina, especially on the back on the inside, on the correct places, where the forehead, nose, cheeks and chin of the masked dancers often rubbed against it.
Height: 28 cm; width: 16 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.