[estcrh]

Originally Posted by Ibrahiim al Balooshi

Salaams estcrh ALEX and all... I have to say I didn't spot that either, moreover, I was looking for something funny ... Now that you point it out it is quite amazing how someone has put this all together wrongly (unless the wearer fell from his horse and that's where his knees ended up!!) I suppose it is funny...ha! Did you mention it to the Museum?

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

Ibrahiim and all, I have found that museums in general do not want to be told that they are wrong, here is another example. Recently I spotted this image being posted all over the internet. It is a samurai full face mask (somen), there is no doubt about that, anyone can google "samurai somen" and come up with matching images. There are several different versions of this somen but all have the same basic description.

Iron Executioners Mask, European 1501-1700 Wellcome Library, London

So I did a little detective work and found the photographer responsible for taking one of the images, he was actually very cordial, he stated that he simply copied the museums description of the image and he felt that seeing the respectable nature of the museum (The Wellcome Collection) that owns the somen that they must be right in the accuracy of the description, but he did say that if the museum changed their description that he would do the same on his images.

So I did a little more digging and found links to the images with the wrong description. (http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/M0005113.html) and (http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/M0005114.html). So I thought that this would be an easy one, I contacted the museum many months ago and sent them all of the information they would need to see that the item being described as a "European executioners mask" was in fact a samurai somen. Well the mask is still mislabeled and the museum never replied to me.