Bamileke Headdress, Cameroon

Pure white feathers, with a few grey shafts showing like pencil lines on a snowdrift.

This headdress is Bamileke, from Cameroon, Central Africa, contemporary, in chicken feather. In the Grassfields of Cameroon, feather headdresses are traditionally associated with dancing and ceremonial dress, and they are often seen today as wall pieces. The feathers are layered in tight rings around a central tuft, opening into a broad, even disk. Here the color is an almost unbroken white. Darker quills peek through in a few places. It is 7 inches high and 40 in diameter.

Quiet as snowfall, and about as hard to stop looking at.