HOME | DD

Description
Scrimshaw is perhaps the only truly uniquely American art form. Developed by whalers and sailors who needed a way to pass the long, dull hours aboard a ship, scrimshaw is the art of engraving a design into a hard polished surface (usually ivory or bone) and colorizing it with ink, oil paint or charcoal. This process is very difficult and time consuming, many many hours of dedicated labor can go into a single small piece.

This item is one of my first ever successful pieces of scrimshaw. The saber toothed tiger was hand-engraved using a diamond-point tool onto a piece of tagua nut.

Unlike ivory, tagua nut is inexpensive, legal to buy sell and own, and is renewable, making it an ideal surface to work on before trying an actual piece of fossil ivory.

This has been attached with epoxy to a silver finding and is a completed necklace. It's for sale here: [link]

Description
Scrimshaw is perhaps the only truly uniquely American art form. Developed by whalers and sailors who needed a way to pass the long, dull hours aboard a ship, scrimshaw is the art of engraving a design into a hard polished surface (usually ivory or bone) and colorizing it with ink, oil paint or charcoal. This process is very difficult and time consuming, many many hours of dedicated labor can go into a single small piece.

This item is one of my first ever successful pieces of scrimshaw. The saber toothed tiger was hand-engraved using a diamond-point tool onto a piece of tagua nut.

Unlike ivory, tagua nut is inexpensive, legal to buy sell and own, and is renewable, making it an ideal surface to work on before trying an actual piece of fossil ivory.

This has been attached with epoxy to a silver finding and is a completed necklace. It's for sale here: [link]