I was on a day trip, driving around western New Jersey, stopping in Frenchtown, Milford, and later Flemington. While I was in Milford, I browsed through several antique stores when I spotted this carved wooden mask, that made me stop and look closely. There was no ID tag, and the proprietor wasn’t sure where it was from, other than the suggestion that it is African. Despite not learning much about it, I decided that for only $20, I would make the purchase.
As you can see on the front side, there’s several faces within the overall face, and a snake has gone in the left eye and is poking its head outside the right eye. One reason why I’m questioning whether it’s an African mask is the presence of a cross at the top center, which I can’t say I’ve seen in African masks. I suppose it could be Ethiopian, since there is a presence of Christianity there, but image searches don’t show anything similar. I do see some image search results that have a slight resemblance, and they refer to “Pacific Islands” and “Papua, New Guinea,” but again, no solid matches in style, which leaves the origin as unknown, from my perspective.
One other clue, which doesn’t really help too much in setting a geographical location for this carved mask is a signature on the back side, simply signed “Serge,” which suggests a French connection (most likely somewhere other than France, resulting from a French colony …?). If anyone out there has some insight on where this mask might be from, please let me know.
