From Die Muskete, 1938.

" Masks and faces!  Strange beings of the mountains."  From The Sketch, 1911.

"The newest thing in winter auto headgear."  From Popular Mechanics, 1911.

From Die Bühne, 1925.

By Franz Wacik.  From Die Muskete, 1923.

From Iconologia by Cesare Ripa, 1764.

We're often asked how we relax after a long night of time traveling through old books.  Here's a hint: it involves the horse mask we acquired from Archie McPhee.  (As to the feline guardian also pictured, he somehow acquired us along the way.)

Here's a precursor to the Guy Fawkes mask -- an Aleut mortuary mask, from the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1884.

Photo by Leslie Jones, date uncertain.

"Prins Carnaval, Lambert I," date unknown.

The Sneeuwstormbeschermer (face protection from snowstorms), Montreal, Canada, 1939.

From c. 1890.

From L'Ame Amante de Son Dieu, Representée dans les Emblémes de Hermannus Hugo Sur ses Pieux Desirs, 1717.

From Hubert Ellio by Francis Davenant, 1866.

Here's a precursor to the Archie McPhee cat mask, from engraver Tirzah Garwood in 1930. 

From Reineke Fuchs by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1857.