Vintage papier mâché owl mask

Vintage papier mâché owl mask from India

I first came across the shop that sells these masks back in 2009. I was costuming a Bollywood musical, and in Delhi with my French friend and assistant, Anne Marie, buying saris and textiles for the show.
The shop was filled with fantastic papier-mâché masks – huge decorative renditions of Hanuman, Ganesha, sacred cows, birds, cats, donkeys and lions…
I bought a wonderful collection which I still love and have hanging around the house.
When I went back to Delhi in 2016 I brought with me the card of the shop which I’d preciously kept.
To my horror it had become a phone shop selling cheap phone cases and SIM cards.
I almost cried, until they told me that there were still some of the old masks left in the attic…if I wanted to take a look!
😳OMG …I climbed up the steepest steps to a dusty third floor, so excited I could barely breathe!
And there they were – a massively reduced collection but still some beauties. I bought what I could carry and saved them for the opening of Popicoq…you can see them in my earliest posts.
On this visit the shop had changed again and was full of plastic masks and synthetic carnival costumes. But I persisted in asking and eventually they showed me a small pile of paper masks in a grubby corner. I salvaged the best and last of them – and this is one of them.