Sierra de Puebla, State of Puebla, Mexico

7 ½ Inches, painted wood.

This well used female Huehue mask is most distinctive for its many coats of paint, each a different shade. There are simple relief carved ears, effectively shaped but not elaborately modeled. The nose is nicely carved. The eyes are painted on, as is the hairline. In fact the hairline seems to have been painted and repainted.

The back shows the kind of wear that one would expect from so many layers of paint. The ears are pierced but the earrings have been lost. The back is very roughly carved in the area of the mouth, which surprised me, but when I put the mask on my own face, I discovered that one’s nose and chin contact the mask, and one’s mouth does not, so it was quite comfortable, as it would have had to be, to be used for so long.