Inland Turubu Barak Mask-New Guinea Art-Oceanic Art
It is rare to find a good, old legitimate Inland Turubu barak mask with such nice remains of pigments. It gives you an idea of how these initially looked—in addition there would have been boar’s tusks through the nostrils and a corona of black cassowary feathers on the forehead. The whole ensemble attached to a larger dance costume. As you can see from the nicely patinated forehead there is real age and use on the mask. If you look closely to the forehead, you can also see the faint vertical striations from shell scraping—an early smoothing technique. The mask dates to the 1920s, comes from a South Australian collection, is 17” (43.1 cm) in height.