Detailed, Unused Lipico Mask

This handsome lipico with raised scarifications is an unused, unpainted example by a highly accomplished carver from the late 1950s. It came from a U.K. estate of an individual who, one imagines, had acquired it in British Tanganyika in the years immediately preceding independence. Different varieties of wood vary in the degree and speed with which they show oxidation. Once out of the heat of Africa and the often smokey confines of a traditional African home, the process of developing an aged appearance is altered, particularly if a carving’s new home is in a relatively cool, antiseptic European house without a cookfire burning in one corner. Often too, things in the West can end up for stretches in a closet or sealed in a box, effectively shutting off airflow. Some years ago I had the good fortune to open a series of boxes containing masks and figures which had not been unsealed in a few months shy of 45 years. Inside, some polyurethane foam used in the wrapping of the items had deteriorated to the point where simply touching it caused the sheets to disintegrate into dust — but the newspaper in which most items were wrapped? It was pristine, as for all that time, light and airflow to the box interiors had been entirely cut off. $300

10″ H

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