Dan Zoomorphic Mask, Liberia

Reportedly collected in situ by George Way Harley
Bill Moore, Los Angeles
Edwin and Cherie Silver, Los Angeles, acquired from the above circa 1975

Good condition overall for an object of this type and age. Nicks, chips, scratches, and abrasions consistent with age and use. A section of the bottom jaw and three lower teeth have been broken and re-attached with metal bindings. A hairline crack to the back proper left side of the mask. A crack to the proper top right side on the reverse. Pegs from previous attachments around the mouth. On the reverse in white ink and in pencil, the number "14". Very fine dark brown patina.
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This archaic mask may represent a rare type of kaogle (or chimpanzee) mask used in the kagle masquerade, an attribution made on the basis of certain similarities with a more modern mask observed in situ in the western Dan country by Fischer and Himmelheber. They described it as an "unusual kagle" (Fischer and Himmelheber, The Arts of the Dan in West Africa, 1984, p. 71, fig. 67). The authors note that kaogle masks generally have either "deep-set triangular apertures or tubular forms" for eyes, and that "the forehead is very low, but bulges pronouncedly over the powerful cheeks which are usually pyramidal in shape. The large, protruding mouth has no lips, but is sometimes equipped with formidable teeth" (ibid., p. 67). We may note the presence of certain of these features – the bulging forehead and prognathic, toothsome jaw – in this bestial mask, which combines an alert air with a leer of inexpressible cunning.

According to notes in the Silver archive, Ed and Cherie were told that it had been collected by George W. Harley, the Methodist Missionary noted for the collections he formed for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, and for his publications on the Dan and their neighbors. In one of his publications, Harley illustrates a similar mask, with bulging forehead, narrow eyes, and projecting jaw with bared teeth. He describes it as "the dog – a forager for the Poro" (George Schwab, George W. Harley, ed., "Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland", Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. XXXI, 1947, fig. 90 f.). This interpretation is supported aesthetically by a canine-like mask in Charles Ratton, Masques Africains, Paris, 1930, pl. 5, from the collection of the writer Paul Morand, although the scant text provides no ethnographic context. Ratton himself owned another similar mask, illustrated by Philippe Dagen and Maureen Murphy, Charles Ratton. L’invention des arts «primitifs», Paris, 2013, p. 167, fig. 137 (mis-captioned).