Q: In Rottweil, a small town in the South of Germany, they have every year in February a procession with traditional old masks. It’s called the “Rottweiler fool’s procession.” Axel, 1551 A: Thank you. I found a photo on the internet of this event. Also, on May 4, 2018, I posted mask #1354 which was described as follows: TITLE: Fasnet Gschell Mask COUNTRY: Germany SUBREGION: Rottweil ETHNICITY: Swabian German DESCRIPTION: Gschell Narro MAKER: Helmut Kramer CEREMONY: Fasnet (Carnival) AGE: ca. 1970s-1980s MATERIAL: wood, paint You can access two nice close-ups of these famous masks on this website.
From the Dayak people of the Kalimantan portion of Borneo, the mask is a classical style hudoq depicting a mythical boar, bird and dragon; the face painted in red, white and black, with attached ears, the lobes with remains of fiber cord that once held pendant ear decorations. It is 25 inches high and has never been used. It came from the Cobbs Auctioneers, a company that often comes up with high-quality masks that are not terribly expensive. Can someone explain why a mask of this quality would be antiqued on the front and not the rear?
This is an authentic Noh theater mask. Though I can tell this character is an angry old man, I don’t know his name. Nor do I know the name of the play, or when it was made and by what carver. Real Noh masks are very well carved and usually have a lot of personality. When I saw this one I could not resist sharing it with my viewers. If you know more about it, please comment.
MasksoftheWorld.com has been on the internet for a long time. As the Mask Man I look at several hundred Mystery Masks every year. Most of them are poorly made “tourist masks” and they always look old and used. I answer the emails but hardly ever post them for you to see. Fakes don’t interest me much. When I saw this beautiful Vaquero on Google I wanted to share it with you. This is what an authentic old-used (Guatemalan) mask should look like. Enlarge it and check out the details. It has been repainted several times and used frequently for many years.