Headdress (early 1900s): Art, History and Details
Headdress at the Cleveland Museum of Art: early 1900s, Wood, human hair, paint, and possibly kaolin. Explore the work's context, creator attribution and collection history.
Headdress (early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.
The work and its context
The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:
This was used in masked performances of the Agrinya society, a powerful guild formerly restricted to men who had killed an elephant, lion, or man. The white pigment connotes the realm of the ancestors, while the aggressive expression of the face seems to suggest the courage of Agrinya society members.
Object facts
- Title: Headdress
- Date: early 1900s
- Culture: Africa, West Africa, Nigeria, Idoma-style carver
- Type: Mask
- Technique: Wood, human hair, paint, and possibly kaolin
- Dimensions: Overall: 20.4 x 17.8 x 16.2 cm (8 1/16 x 7 x 6 3/8 in.)
- Collection: African Art
- Department: African Art
- Accession number: 1964.444
A detail from the museum
Holes in the neck once attached a flat raffia disk or strings for wearing the headdress-type mask on top of the head.
Collection credit
James Albert and Mary Gardiner Ford Memorial Fund
View the collection record
See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.
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