МАЭ № 571-11

Mask

Kodiak Eskimos

1843

I.G. Voznesenskii's expedition

wood, sinew, paint, feather, bird down, intestine, baleen, sinew

height 41 cm, width 41 cm; mask: height 29.6 cm, width 21.5 cm, width of the profile 13 cm

The lower part of this mask symbolizes a bird’s beak. The methodology employed by the Kodiak Alutiiqs to construct masks is completely different from that employed by the Tlingit. The Kodiak Alutiiqs split the blank tree trunk into two parts. They carve the mask from the outside portion of the piece of wood and then later finish the inside portion. The Tlingit use the inside portion of the log which they steam, having removed the bark and inner “soft” pulp. As a result, the blank used for a mask has a half-round form from which it was a lot easier to make a mask than it was from a log which had been split in two.

Ethnography of America