Pende men and women wear miniature replicas of the masks (sing. gikhokho, pl. ikhokho) used in village masquerades and healing rituals. They wore the pendants as jewelry, suspended around their necks from cords or strings of beads. Those carved from elephant ivory and hippopotamus bone—the preferred material being ivory—were considered prime aesthetic objects that enhanced their owner's sense of beauty and style (ginango). To maintain the natural color of the ivory, owners washed their masks as part of their daily toilet.

Adapted from

• Roslyn A. Walker, Label text, Arts of Africa, 2015.
• Roslyn A. Walker, The Arts of Africa at the Dallas Museum of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 254-255.