News» IN FOCUS: Antique Wooden and Painted Festive Mask from Eastern Europe
A Hungarian might call this mask a "Buso" mask and this refers to a carnival held in the town of Mohacs in which people dress up in fleecy coats and diabolical horned masks and then charge around dancing and carousing. It is something similar to our Halloween but held at the end of winter in February rather than at the end of the old year but in times of yore it represented a similar ritual cleansing and driving out of evil spirits.
Mohacs was the site of a great battle and loss for the Hungarian nation, when they were defeated by the Ottomans in the 16th century, and some people think the festivity relates to this, a commemorative "haka" and defiant war cry encouraging community spirit against the enemy. There is no doubt some truth in this even though ultimately the event is archaic and ritual - you could compare the way our Bonfire night came to remember Guy Fawkes plot but is also the remnant of a more ancient fire festival.
The Mohacs festivity carries on in a form today and so is well known but in fact right across Central and Eastern Europe in the old days a key feature of peasant life were theatrical events of a ritual character, processions, villages mimes, masques and plays and in these masks were often worn. Masks of animals were common such as horses or goats, but also human caricatures.
So this is not a "Buso" mask, it does not have horns and is not a semi-animal demon face but is a grotesque of a human figure, it comes from further east than Mohacs, from Eastern Romania. If you look closely at this mask you can see that it has a grotesque and horror quality, a prominent chin, a big nose, the cheekbones are high giving the sense of sunken cheeks, like an undernourished spirit come back from the dead. The mouth is down turned in an unfriendly grimace re-inforced by the two single wooden teeth and two nails. Somebody has put a red plastic bead on the nose to represent a wart while the greeny paint wash creates a ghoulish not to say luminous effect to the mask which would probably have been worn at night in a candle lit village mime performed from house to house. If you look closely you can also see pin nail holes along the top and sides and above the upper lip and this indicates that the mask would originally have had hair and whiskers. The absence of paint on the chin suggests the mask may have had a beard and probably quite a long wispy one with long locks to the side and long droopy whiskers.
This may be the mask of a demon but also it is likely to be a mask of the Jew character in the mime and in a sense that is quite unsettling it is both as the Jew character in the mime was the bad guy and was demonised as at this time prior to 1st World War and before the later ethnic cleansing project of the Nazi period this part of Europe had a huge Jewish population living alongside the peasants and among the peasantry ethnic prejudice and anti-semitism was standard.
This Peasant Carnival Jews Mask Ref. 2407 is available for sale. We also have a Shaman Mask in Carved Wood Ref. 2024. This is a primitive Shamanic mask with eye, mouth sockets and carved ears, which wraps right around the head rather like a helmet - it is made of thick light timber with holes for cords.