Venice Venice

The Mask Makers

A mask shop in the sestiere of San Polo, November. The shop window — and this is not a window: the masks hang from every surface of an internal room, accessible from the street — was a cascade of accumulated craft. Each mask the work of artisans who have made the same forms for decades, in the same alleys, for the same event.

Carnevale in Venice began, historically, as a period of licensed misrule — the deliberate suspension of social hierarchy through the equalising device of the mask. Anyone masked is anyone. The masks now are sold primarily to tourists who will not wear them. The craft survives the function.