Stately Bassa Passport Mask

A miniature Bassa mask collected in the 1970s in Liberia by American USAID employee Blake Robinson. The wood of this mask presents with a black patina, but is in fact dark red, perhaps Kandia wood. Passport masks were known to the Dan and related peoples as “small heads,” “ancestor substitutes” and “things that are fed.” The term passport mask was an invention of Europeans, derived from the observation that men often carried them on their person. Individuals with a spiritual connection with a mask, such as Poro society members, or those whose family own an important mask, are respectively required or entitled to commission a miniature version of that mask. Passport masks are stored wrapped in cloth or in a draw-string pouch, sometimes with other regalia such as a miniature dance skirt. The maskettes are occasionally removed and rubbed with oil and ritually fed, but generally they are kept on the owner’s body or among his possessions out of sight. Miniature masks may also be part of a larger ritual object, medicinal container or charm. Mounted on a custom base. $450

3″

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