In this research note I draw together a number of dispersed snippets of information about mask and figure carving among the western Kuranko of northeastern Sierra Leone. At its center is a description of a Kuranko mask I was able to photograph in April 1993 in the course of a research trip that took me northwards from the town of Masingbi on the road to Kono through the Kuranko chiefdoms of Nieni and Sambaia. I cannot claim to have carried out serious research into Kuranko masking or carving traditions, but there may nevertheless be value in putting my notes on seeing this particular mask and the observations I was able to make on that occasion in the context of what little we know of Kuranko masking from other sources: for example, the information in the registers of the Sierra Leone National Museum about masks described as “Kuranko” in its collections....
A Mask of the Western Kuranko Unavailable
William Hart taught philosophy for forty years, first at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone from 1969–72; then at the University of Glasgow; and from 1977 at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. While at Fourah Bay College he developed his interest in African art. He has published widely on the traditional arts of Sierra Leone, is the author of Continuity and Discontinuity in the Art History of Sierra Leone (Quaderni Poro 9, 1995), and is a consulting editor of African Arts. More recently, since his retirement from teaching in 2009, he collaborated with the late Ezio Bassani in updating Bassani and Fagg's 1988 catalogue raisonné of Afro-Portuguese ivories. [email protected]
William Hart taught philosophy for forty years, first at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone from 1969–72; then at the University of Glasgow; and from 1977 at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. While at Fourah Bay College he developed his interest in African art. He has published widely on the traditional arts of Sierra Leone, is the author of Continuity and Discontinuity in the Art History of Sierra Leone (Quaderni Poro 9, 1995), and is a consulting editor of African Arts. More recently, since his retirement from teaching in 2009, he collaborated with the late Ezio Bassani in updating Bassani and Fagg's 1988 catalogue raisonné of Afro-Portuguese ivories. [email protected]
William Hart; A Mask of the Western Kuranko. African Arts 2019; 52 (3): 28–33. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00479
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