YAM MASK, Abelam people, Papua New Guinea. Mask, tribal, ethnographic

YAM MASK, Abelam people, Papua New Guinea. These woven masks are attached to giant yams in harvest festivals. This is a wide open woven mask, with piercing white eyes, and large white earrings Yam masks often have no colour.

As it falls off or darkens. This means this yam mask was collected soon after a Harvest Ceremony. And since they began to disappear in the 1970s and 1980s, it suggests this mask is at least 40 years old.

Size: 23.5 x 27.5 x 6 cm.

---