Papîer Machédventure (Part I)

Vintage 1930s Russian theatre mask, sold on Etsy

My little man with a collapsed lower lip and broad fat cheeksOn one of my trawling trips on Etsy I discovered this lovely vintage Russian theatre mask made from papîer-maché. The delicate colours were lovely, and I particularly liked the surprised expression. I decided it would be a good thing to make my own mask from scratch.

By a strange coincidence, my friend Sapphire expressed a desire to do the very same thing, so we planned to embark on this papîer maché adventure together. 

The first step was to create the base of the mask … a hysterically funny process 

The masks’ shapes are quite square before trimmingSince neither of us had done any papîer maché since primary school, we found instructions on About.com. We used a traditional mixture of flour and water – with a bit of salt as preservative thrown in for good measure. Not enough, it transpired later. 

The first step was to create the base of the mask, and this required building on our own faces, a hysterically funny process that had us in fits of suppressed laughter – trying not to destroy the work of course. My mask was a bit funny-looking with his broad cheeks and collapsed lip (the result of an inadvertantly placed finger), I concluded. Although my mask was made on my friend’s face, it fits mine quite nicelyI decided to make a second attempt; was much more methodical, and had a better result for my care. We carefully peeled off the masks, covered them with plastic wrap, and set them aside to dry for several days.

With our masks nicely hardened, it was time to thicken them with several more layers of newspaper. The next step would be to build in some bone structure using papîer maché pulp. But that would wait for next time.