Forehead masks of this type leave the dancer's face exposed. Sometimes during the dance the blanket is raised with the forearms to cover the face, allowing the mask to peer over the blanket and heightening the illusion of a bird or animal. This mask is carved of red cedar and is very light in weight. The painting is in the usual colors--black eyebrows, eye detail, and beak; red lips, nostrils, and cheek detail; green eyesockets; and white in various lines and negative areas. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

The wood is cedar. The paint is red, black, and white.

The renowned Kwakwaka'wakw artist Mungo Martin identified this transformation mask as his own work. It was made for a chief named Lagius, probably around 1920. The style of carving and painting are recognizable as that of Mungo Martin or his stepfather and mentor Charley James. Although the mask is called Crane in the museum records, the gray color and the hunched attitude when folded are reminiscent of the great blue heron, a bird common to the Kwakwaka'wakw country and often miscalled crane in English. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)

This Sculpin mask epitomizes the flamboyance of Kwakwaka'wakw theatrical sculpture. Jagged contours, bold, intertwined forms, and snapping, fanning, and waving appendages--all covered with contrasting and complex patterns of strong color--create creatures of startling fantasy. The subdued, wavering light of the dance house softens those contrasts amd unifies the forms. The sculpin swims to the rise and fall of its song in a sea of firelight and swirling eagle down. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)

The paint is red, white, black, and green.

These carved frontlets were attached to regal headdresses and used in the Kwakwaka'wakw Tlasula. This beaver is identified by its two large front teeth and stick in its mouth. Its flat tail raised at the top has a human face at the base.

The cotton cloth is black and dark blue. The cloth is red.

The paint is black, red, green, and white. The wool is blue.