Spot the Frippet: mask.

I hope the mask you see isn't being worn by a surgeon, that's all. 


University of Washington, Seattle.

I hope instead that any mask you see is being worn by a fencer (a sword-fighter, I mean):


photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen

or perhaps an ice hockey player. 

Or, if you happen to be Ancient Greek who's reading this via some sort of time-slip worm-hole type thing (you never know) an actor:


(though this mosaic is actually Roman. It's in the Hall of the Doves, Palazzo Nuovo.)

Or perhaps your nearest mask being worn by someone spraying paint or sawing chipboard.

Of course if you're in Venice then masks are everywhere, on every other street stall.


photo by gnuckx

but if you are somewhere else then you might be able to find a dragonfly larva or a fox: their faces are called masks, as are the faces of Siamese cats:


photo by Achileos

Or perhaps, in your quest for eternal beauty, you are wearing this sort of mask:


photo: By Sérgio (Savaman) Savarese - Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1795664

The question always to ask with masks, of course, is: what is the wearer hiding? 

And, even more importantly, why?

Spot the Frippet: mask. This word comes from the Italian maschera, from the Arabic maskhara, a clown, from sakhira, mockery.