Artist description
Before the coins came, a cowrie was money. A handful of them bought a goat; a bagful was a bride's family sitting down to talk. So when a man in the Grassfields wanted the world to see what his house was worth, he did not count it out in the market , he had it sewn onto a face and sent it out to dance. Masks like this one belonged to the regulatory associations and lineage houses that ran a chiefdom's public life, and they came out for funerals of important men, for harvest, for the annual dances where every compound showed what it had become since last year.
Follow the rows down the left cheek and they loosen near the jaw, coins slipping in among the shells, because the century turned and the household kept adding whatever wealth it had. The raffia beard is the mark of an elder, of a voice that speaks last in a dispute, and it has been mended twice by hands that did not match the original twist. Somebody knelt down and repaired a beard so the mask could dance one more season. The wood is darkest where it was gripped, and that darkness is the only signature anyone left on it.
