Lahore Museum finds 50 rare ethnographic masks

The Lahore Museum has recently discovered 50 rare ethnographic masks made by Schlangintweits, the three brothers of Munich, during their tour to India from 1854-1858.
According to a museum official, the masks could be the Schlangintweits' only surviving ones out of total 275 the brothers made. Their services were hired for the research project by the East India Company.
The museum had corresponded with the Indian Museum, Calcutta, British Museum, V&A Museum, British Library and Dublin Museum for sharing information about these masks, but none of them had such valuable collection of the Schlangintweits' ethnographic masks.
"The discovery is termed as a great achievement of curatorial staff regarding survival of the world's tangible cultural heritage," Lahore Museum's Senior Research Officer Iffat Azim said.

Azim said the ethnographic contributions of the Schalagintweit brothers were employed by the East India Company to carry out the survey work were of immense significance.
"The Munich brothers had prepared 275 ethnographic facial masks and transported them to the UK along with various specimens of zoology, botany, geology and ethnography, eg 251 specimens of Indian fabric etc, for further investigation by scientists," she said.
"We are working on a detailed research article related to the Schlangintweits and their efforts to gauge the multiethnic society of India, keeping in view their caste, occupations, religion and sex," she said, adding the masks are on display at the Lahore Museum.