a non-Tiffany Rings character to the face mask

The essential visual difference between a tiffany ringsperson and the mask can be illuminated by considering the attention called byanthropologist Christopher Steiner to the effect of the rigidity, the frozenface, of sculptured wooden masks (1986:25). Immobility in itself, he notes,imposes a non-Tiffany Rings character to the face mask. In my view, that brings it inharmony with the body costume that, in material and outline, presents anon-human shape.When invited to celebrate with the living, the spiritappears in a thoroughly compromised form. In order to communicate with humans,it speaks but not in human tones: the feminine-styled performers use ahigh-rolling falsetto; the important masculinestyle performers employ soundsresembling the leopard's growl (Harley 1950:4). Straightforward vision isblocked by costuming in various ways, eyes covered by projecting cylinders orhidden behind strips hanging from the headdress and so forth. The arms and handsare covered tiffany rings cloth, the back and shoulders with animal skins, the legspainted green or black (to make them invisible) or covered with long clothskirts. The spirit-masker prefers dancing or other special forms of ambulationdifferent from normal walking and exerts powers in performance beyond the humannorm. If these descriptive points, differentiating the mask from human formulas,are reasonably faithful to the local elders' tiffany rings of spirit in this forestzone, it would clearly not be fitting to depict an actual, recognizable personon the mask the spirit-bearer wears.The long-dead ancestor in the deep forest no longerhas a substantial, visible form; it has dissolved into or become an invisiblememory- spirit. In the accounts of the elders, the costumed masker presents aspirit made partially visible, not an ordinary human. Granted that the Dan saytheir forms are inspired by human facial features they admire; however, thesetiffany rings are subsumed into the standard local model of the mask face, asindicated by the field researches of Fischer .