This small African brass mask was made with a loop hole on the top, allowing it be hung or worn as a pendant on a necklace. Each one of these handcarst pendants was made using the traditional lost was casting technique: the mask is fashioned by hand of bees wax, surrounded by a mud investment then dried. Once hardened the resulting assembly is baked in a fire which further hardens the investment and melts the wax out. Each resulting mold is then cooled and the molten brass poured into it. The investment is then broken off which is the fundamental difference between modern casting where the mold can be reused. Traditionally, no mold can ever be used to make more than a single item. Each mask is therefore unique; it's not even possible for any two to be the same so all the masks of this type share the same design characteristics but each is slightly different from all the others.

This mask is the larger of the 2 sizes we have of this pendant; it measures 2 1/4" tall