Dan Zakpai Mask, Fire Watcher | Metal Teeth, Poro Society

West Africa, Ivory Coast, Dan culture, ca. 1900–1960 CE. A carved wooden face mask of the northern Dan type, possibly a Zakpai fire-watcher mask. The high domed forehead sweeps into an ovoid face, its blackened surface polished to a deep reddish patina. Circular pierced eyes are rimmed with sheet metal and framed by a band of red cloth drawn across the brow; the open mouth, lips wrapped in the same red fabric, bares inserted metal teeth beneath a grooved philtrum. A metal nail is set into the crown. Masks of this class were danced by Poro-initiated men, the Zakpai policing cooking fires in the dry season and enforcing village order through spectacle and mock aggression. Size: 8.75" W x 5.5" H (22.2 cm W x 14.0 cm H).

Among the Dan of the Ivory Coast and Liberia, masks are not costumes but embodiments: each gives visible form to a spirit (gle) that has appeared to a dreamer and demands to be brought into the world. Function, not shape alone, defines a mask's identity, and a single face can be promoted through a sequence of roles over its working life. The zakpai gle belongs to the fire-prevention office, sent out at midday in the dry season to extinguish unattended hearths, a duty enforced with theatrical menace by a masker who runs, shouts, and scatters the careless. The aggressive register of the type accounts for the wide tubular eyes, which signal the piercing sight of a spirit, and for the bared teeth. Applied cloth, metal, and accreted offerings on Dan masks accumulate through use; they are records of service rather than decoration.

Provenance: Collection of Tom Carson, NYS., active 1970’s - early 2000’s, then by descent to family.

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Item #

73431

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