Protective face coverings have emerged as a potent, multifaceted metaphor for the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite inconsistent examples set by elected leaders and conflicting recommendations made by public health officials, unisex masks have steadily assumed a greater role in social distancing measures and become mandatory in certain settings outside the home. Options range from standard blue and white surgical masks to creative DIY improvisations and “Corona Couture.” Some museums are looking to add homemade masks to their collections as a way to document the crisis. Worn for slightly different reasons and more implicitly gendered, the masks owned by early American women and even children were no less symbolic in terms of practical use, commodification, or controversy.
Notwithstanding their association with pre-Lenten carnival and the masquerade, early modern masks also served utilitarian, health-related purposes, namely protection against sun and windburn, and the preservation of a light or pale complexion for European women and those of European descent living in the Americas. Believed to have originated in sixteenth-century Italy, oval masks sometimes referred as “vizards,” “visors,” and even “invisories” in early English sources were available in black, brown, green, red, and “natural” colored velvet. They appear to have changed little in overall design and materiality as they made their way across Europe and the Atlantic Ocean by the mid-seventeenth century.
I first encountered these curious, somewhat frightening objects by accident while studying the inventory of Sarah Williams (1716-1737) of Deerfield, Massachusetts. The youngest child of the Reverend John Williams and his second wife Abigail Bissell, Sarah maintained a rather impressive wardrobe at the time of her death, including a mask valued 2 shillings. Her mask likely resembled extant European examples, one of which was found folded in half and buried in the wall of a circa 1600 English house. Formed out of cardboard, these are typically covered with velvet on the front and lined with light-colored silk or soft vellum that was sometimes perfumed. Holes are cut for the eyes and mouth, and the wearer secured the mask to her face by biting down onto a mouthpiece, usually a glass bead attached to the back. To date, no masks with a colonial American provenance are known to survive.