African wood skull headpiece

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thecrazymasklady
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2020 2:49 pm

African wood skull headpiece

Post by thecrazymasklady »

Hello!

I'm happy to have discovered this forum. I've been looking for information about my beloved guy here but I haven't found anything very conclusive.

He's made of a very smoky-odor wood and his eyes are transparent so that when I put a light inside (as in photo 3) they are illuminated.

The closest thing I've found is some skeleton sculptures from the Tiv people Nigeria. But I still haven't seen anything that looks quite like him. Particularly a double-sided face or a small skull atop a larger one.

Any ideas? Thank you in advance!

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Julien
Posts: 48
Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2018 10:43 pm

Re: African wood skull headpiece

Post by Julien »

Hi thecrazymasklady, unfortunately you have a fantasy style decorative "mask" that is also why you couldn't find anything similar! amazing how they make this stuff look old right?

If you have seen loads of real pieces (and fakes) it is possible to see the difference between real age and a faked "patina" (that is the surface age of the wood and skin of the object) like on your object (it's not really a mask because you cant put it in front of your face and see! you could put it on top of your head though!)

If you want to learn more about African art, i suggest you pickup this book:

Africa: The Art of a Continent Paperback – March 1, 1999
by Tom Phillips (Author), Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain) (Author)
ISBN-10: 3791320041
ISBN-13: 978-3791320045
artofacontinent.jpg


you can find it used for about $20- a Real bargain!

Also please go to Facebook and join the group: Great of Fake collecting African art

And soon you will realize that 99,9999999999% of all the African art sold is fake :)
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