The Last Mask Maker

For three generations, one family in Mas village has carved pule wood into the faces of protective spirits. Now the youngest heir must decide whether to continue.

In the village of Mas, south of Ubud, the sound of mallet on chisel begins before dawn. Wayan Suardana inherited his father's workshop in 1911 — a bamboo-roofed pavilion with a dirt floor, three workbenches, and a shelf of pule wood blanks aging in the dark. The best masks, he says, come from wood that has listened to gamelan for at least two monsoon seasons before the first cut. I arrived on a Tuesday morning in September to watch him shape the brow of a new Barong.

Gold Leaf and Ruby Glass

The embellishment takes longer than the carving. A single Barong mask requires seventeen layers of gold leaf, each burnished with an agate stone until the surface catches lamplight like still water. The ruby-glass mirrors — imported from Surabaya since the 1880s — are set into the crown with tree resin and beeswax. Suardana's grandmother arranged them in a pattern she said came to her in a dream during the Galungan festival of 1897, and the family has repeated it faithfully ever since.

“Every mask begins as a conversation between the carver and the wood. The pule tree tells you where the spirit wants to emerge. I only follow the grain.”

— Wayan Suardana