Following no pattern, this mask is truly unique with remarkable ornamental details; the closer you look, the more you will notice...

This is a half-face leather costume mask designed for long-wearing comfort. Eating, drinking, and kissing are all possible while wearing this mask. Please note, vision will be restricted in the right eye when the mask is worn with they eye patch closed. Each leather mask is shaped and painted by hand (well, painted by a brush wielded by an actual human hand). The leather mask has some flexibility, but will not lose its form, as the leather has been fixed in shape by liquid acrylic. (Please note, this mask is purely decorative, it will not work effectively as a steam-powered mass increasing device, nor will it offer any real physical protection.)

This Steampunk-style mask is made of hundreds of pieces of leather glued to a larger mask base for strength. The mask is made from 4 to 5 oz. vegetable-tanned top-quality leather, low v.o.c. acrylic-based glue, low v.o.c. eco-friendly acrylic paint, and 3/32" elastic cord. This mask also incorporates a chatoyant gemstone (Tiger's eye), silicone earbuds, and metalic clock face, hands, and gears. This leather mask is painted Iridescent Copper, with bronze accents, with a black drybrush wash for texture. It secures to the head with black elastic cord.

The leather mask will be shipped in a box, securely packed.

And now... the story behind the mask:

While perusing Mr. Eisenberg's journals late one night, I found a very curious entry, made all the more curious in that after October's remarkable aurora borealis, followed by a severe electrical storm, the entry seems to have disappeared. I have tried to recreate the now-missing entry to the best of my memory.

"Poor Dr. Banfield. Playing with forces he could not possibly understand, I fear he may have damaged part of his remarkable intelligence as well as his heart… The trouble started after last week's remarkable northern sky lights display, followed by a bolt of lightning that struck the upper level of the laboratory. The good Doctor and I rushed up the stairs to deal with any potential fires. Oh, how I wish we would have found an actual fire, rather than the fiery-haired vixen lying unconscious on the floor.

"At first we thought she had suffered far worse injuries since the both the metallic gauntlet and eye patch mask she wore exhibited heavy damage with an unknown iridescent steam angrily escaping from multiple cracks. Dr. Banfield carried this seemingly helpless woman to the medical laboratory for aid and observation. After he stabilized her condition, he removed her gauntlet and mask and began to study them. For days, while she lay unconscious, he was baffled by the confounding technology she wore. Seemingly opaque prisms and lenses were attached to gears made of metals he had never seen.

"When she finally awoke, Banfield had many questions for her, all of which he seemed to forget as she opened her green eyes. Rather, it was she who had questions for my friend, all which he answered under the hypnotic spell of her beauty. She was very curious about the specific time she arrived in our laboratory as well as common events of the era. But, of all the questions she asked, the one I feared hearing the most was when she asked Banfield if he would 'like to go on amazing adventure…' When he answered in the affirmative I felt as if all of the steam from my heart had escaped.

"Over the next few days, I was saddened to see Banfield scurrying about the laboratory, playing the role of her assistant, providing her with schematics and prototypes of his steam batteries as he attempted to repair her damaged mask and gauntlet. He all but ignored my presence during this time. When I did confront him and demanded explanations he pulled out a sheet of paper and drew two dots on the page, one at the top and one at the bottom and asked me what the shortest distance between them was. I took the pencil from him and drew a line between the dots. When I gave the paper back to him, he folded it in half to make the two dots touch. I told him he was mad to think that his batteries could provide the power necessary to fold the very nature of space upon itself; even tunnels through mountains required great remarkable power to create.

"To which he replied: 'My good friend, you mistake the nature of this work. First, please remember, we do not live on a two-dimensional sheet of paper; I plan to travel through spheres, not tunnels, spheres. Second, if Dr. Mau is correct, and the steam of the universe is made of some sort of spacetime mixture, I will not be traveling through space alone.'

"When I objected by reiterating my concerns of energy requirements, he replied, 'The passenger of the locomotive neither builds tracks or powers boilers. Rather, the passenger simply needs to know the schedule and the location of the station.' In other words, he thought he could travel through time as simply as a passenger travels on the train. This mystery woman had convinced my friend that he should usurp his life of reason and science to travel around spacetime like some deluded vagabond.

"From what I gathered, the oculus of the mask allowed the wearer to not only find these spacetime bubbles, but also helped the wearer determine the exact tangential angle necessary at which to enter and exit the bubble. The gauntlet created an energy field that allowed someone to enter the spacetime bubble in the same way that wetting one's finger with a soapy solution allows one to stick a finger in a bubble made of the same soapy solution without popping it. Without the mask, one would be blind as to the correct angle necessary to enter and exit the bubble. Without the gauntlet, there would be no way to enter or exit the bubble. Banfield claimed that he would join the mystery woman on some of her adventures to learn what he could of her unique science.

"Realizing I could not convince Banfield of his folly, I conceded, only pointing out one tiny flaw in his transportation analogy. There is, of course, one other thing necessary for a passenger to validly ride a locomotive: a ticket. To do otherwise would make one a vagabond, thief, or… dare I say… a pirate… the scourge of all civilized people. Who knows what created these spacetime bubbles and what their purpose is? If these bubbles were created by intelligent beings, however, I was certain that not only would they find free riders to be unwelcome, but they would certainly have the means to police their creations as well.

"It was after this statement that Banfield finally ceased his prattling of spacetime and seemingly lurched back into his own mind. With horror on his face and determination in his eyes, he apologized for not listening to me earlier and ran off to the lab. I followed as quickly as I could, hearing loud arguing and accusations. I approached the threshold of the main laboratory just in time to see Banfield dive through the air and snatch the mask from our visitor's face as, with her gauntleted hand extended, she leapt and disappeared into a mist of crackling sparks. Banfield put the mask on himself and looked at the place where she had leapt, softly murmuring 'that poor girl…'

"He immediately and carefully constructed what appeared to be a large metallic balloon around the area where she disappeared. He commanded everyone who worked in the laboratory to never come within 18 centimeters of the grounded metallic zeppelin. Eventually he closed that laboratory to everyone except myself. Some nights I found him, wearing the mask, peering into the ever-increasingly dust-covered metal monstrosity. This erratic behavior went on for exactly one year, at which time, to my delight, I discovered that the metallic object was gone, along with the mask.

"When I challenged Banfield as to where these objects had gone, he looked at me as if I were insane and told me to quit wasting his time, and that he had never built any zeppelin in his workshops. While I find Banfield's lack of memory of this event to be somewhat disturbing, I am also happy to see him back to his old self. He even looks younger as he rededicates himself to his work."

That is as much of the entry as I can remember. While I would like to say that I copied the mask referred to in this entry to the most exacting specifications, I can't seem to find the drawings of it, nor can I remember exactly what the drawings look like, as they seem to have slipped out of my memory.

Materials: vegetable tanned leather, low voc ecofriendly acrylic paint, elastic cord, low voc ecofriendly acrylic glue, chatoyant gemstone, metalic clock face, hands, gears, silicone earbuds

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