I
Above, "Dutch Whalers off Spitzbergen, 1684." Fossil walrus ivory on a mount of East Indian rosewood .
• ,.
"Sailing Day Portrait" was awarded the prestigious Rudolph J. Schaefer Maritime Heritage Award at the 16th Annual Mystic International in September 1995. Matching fossil walrus tusks on an ebony and ivory mount.
"Ahab and the Harpooneers. " Mammoth ivory and fossil walrus ivory on a cocabola mount.
J
the whaling industry in particular. Scrimshaw really came into being with the Yankee whalemen in the 1700s. Before that whaling was very much a coastal industry. They killed a whale and brought it back to shore for processing. But when they discovered sperm whales, that changed. The sperm whale is not a shore creature; they had to keep going further and further out to hunt it. Eventually they had to process the whales aboard ship, and voyages soon became longer and longer, from weeks, to a few months, to three to five years. The average size of a whaling crew was about thirty men on ships that could be handled with a crew of six to ten men. SEA HISTORY 77, SPRING 1996
It could be months between sightings and there was a lot of spare time, so they turned to fashioning objects from whale parts. The early whalemen made thousands of utilitarian objects like sail needles, mallets, knives, forks, spoons, water dippers with whalebone handles and hollowed-out coconut shells. They made pie crimpers and swifts_--elaborate contraptions for winding yam. As for the medium, the pieces of ivory are so interesting to work with. They are also rather expensive, so they ' re not something you just do a sketch on. I put my heart and soul into it. Each piece of ivory is an ancient thing and I respect it. It came from a living creature. The
woolly mammoth has been extinct for thousands and thousands of years, so it is not like working on a piece of paper or canvas. Fossil ivories are not a renewable resource. Within the next ten years or so, it's going to be a lot harder to get and a lot more expensive. As this happens, I believe only the most dedicated artists will stay with the medium. That's why I want every piece I do to be better than the last. It comes back to a respect for the ivory. This stuff has been lying in the ground for thousands of years and through chance or fate it has ended up in my hands. It's up to me to do something worthy with it. !,
25