Japanese animal masks

Children in the industrialized world are surrounded by animal
imagery: toys, cartoons, pictures, ...

... decorations of every sort. No other source of imagery can begin to compete with that of animals. The apparently spontaneous interest that children have in animals might lead one to suppose that this has always been the case…. Yet it was not until the nineteenth century that reproductions of animals became a regular part of the décor of middle class childhoods
John Berger, Why Look at Animals, 1980









































A collection of japanese watercolour sketches for toy masks
from late 19th to early 20th century

source (via Bibliodyssey)