Post #184521 by Johnny Dollar on Mon, Sep 5, 2005 1:32 PM

this archaeology piece does not answer any questions, it only attempts to access our collective knowledge.

not only do i own two of this style of wood mask, my good friend has one that his family once owned, and i recall seeing this in a family friends’ beachouse in the 70’s. also, there is a mask of similar style, painted to resemble bug bugging eyes, at the hala kahiki, which i thought i had photographed but sadly did not.

i have tried to research the origin of this mask many places, but have come up with nuthin.’ when i posted the big mask in tiki finds on 11/14/2003, BK PM’ed me that he thought it was a “menehune mask,” but i have found nothing called that anywhere else. these do not strike me as being of pacific origin, but likewise they don’t seem to have a whole lot of similarity to african or native american carvings i have seen. waikiki kitty did buy this inuit bone pendant carving at a flea market

that has a vague resemblance, but it is not strong enough for me to think the wood masks have inuit origin.

i did find these cool links though:
http://www.masksoftheworld.com/
http://gallery.sjsu.edu/masks/Imagesfram.html

the consistent design features I have seen is:

long mask, carved from one piece of wood
smiling mouth
long nose, flared at bottom
big eyes or cheeks? if painted they look like big googly eyes
over the big eyes/cheeks are little, crescent-shaped “eyes” that were either functionally or representationally the eye holes for the mask
the top of head has some kind of head-dress

freakbear posted some samples he had as well:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=1099&forum=5&vpost=127744&hilite=mask

showing these examples

can anybody help pin these style of masks down? mahalo…