Fang - 210316 - Old African Mask from the Fang - Gabon. - Vendu

old  african Ngil mask from the Fang, Gabon. 

This type of mask appears in a secret society and serves to fight witchcraft. 

Hand carved from a single piece of wood

Height 33 cm.

The professional standard is not included in the auction. You can order it there for 29.85 euros.

Taxatiewaarde; 175- 225 euro

The people that are called “Fang” in the geographic or ethnographic literature number 800,000 and constitute a vast mosaic of village communities, established in a large zone of Atlantic equatorial Africa comprising Cameroon, continental equatorial Guinea and nearly the whole north of Gabon, on the right bank of the Ogowe River. Historically the Fang were itinerant, and it is relatively receiiiii that they have settled into this broad area. The migratory existence of the Fang prohibited the creation of ancestral shrines at gravesites. Instead, the remains of the important dead, in the form of the skull and other bones, were carried from place to place in a cylindrical bark box. The great rain forest region where the Fang settled is a plateau of middle altitude, cut by innumerable waters with falls and rapids rendering navigation for the most part impossible, and with a climate typically equatorial. Fang are principally hunters but also agriculturists. Their social structure is based on a clan, a group of individuals with a common ancestor, and on the family.