An Ekoi headdress
The woven rattan base leading to a slender, elongated neck supporting the finely rendered head with full lips and nose framed by high cheekbones and demilune eyes in low relief beneath the rounded overhanging brow surmounted by an elaborately upswept single-crested coiffure, the whole, except for the eyes and coiffure, covered in skin, decorated with natural pigment.
ht. 16 3/4 in.
Footnotes:
Provenance: The Laure-Marie and Daniel P. Biebuyck collection, Newton, Massachusetts; Sotheby's, New York, November 14, 2003, lot 42; The collection of Deborah Stokes Hammer, Chicago, Illinois; Ernst Anspach, New York.

Exhibited: Brainerd Hall Art Gallery, State University College at Potsdam, New York, African Sculpture: Rare and Familiar Forms from the Anspach Collection, October 1974, number 52.
Columbia College of Art Gallery, Chicago, African Body Arts: Visual Biography, 1997.

Published: The Museum of Primitive Art, African Tribal Sculpture from the Collection of Ernst and Ruth Anspach, 1967, 30, catalogue of the exhibition at The Museum of Primitive Art, New York, November 1967-February 1968.
Walker, African Women/African Art, 1976, 37, figure 23, catalogue of the exhibition at The African-American Institute, New York, September 13-December 31, 1976.