 Carving Out BookmarksbyLauren Roberts
Scrimshaw, however, originally referred to the whalers’ tools they used in their work—seam rubbers, fids, belaying pins, and thole pins—rather than the art they created as mementos for their loved ones at home. Scrimshaw began on whaling ships between 1745 and 1759. But the art didn’t really take off until after the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) when whaling enjoyed a meteoric rise—longer voyages, larger crews, and overmanned ships. It began as a leisure activity since whaling could not be done at night thus freeing up time for whalers that other sailors did not have. These early pictorial works, dating from around 1871-1821, were created by British South Sea whalers using sailing needles and lampblack, a suspension of carbon in oil, the product of combustion, easily obtained from the shipboard tryworks (oil cookery). Almost all these were anonymously made, but the first piece to bear a date—1817—is elaborately but anonymously inscribed from the whaleship Adam of London. The first American piece to bear a date, from 1827, was engraved by Edward Burdett who was on the ship Origon, out of Fairhaven, MA. A whaler from Nantucket became the most famous early scrimshaw artist; Frederick Myrick produced more than three dozen scrimshaws when he was aboard the ship Susan during 1828-29, and he is known because he was the first to sign and date his work. The teeth used in scrimshaw were “hard byproducts,” that is, parts of the whale with little or no commercial value. Furthermore, the teeth of the sperm whale could be polished to a high gloss then engraved and colored because of their milky smoothness, homogeneity of texture, and color. They weren’t large, eight inches being large so the scenes were necessarily simpler than ones made of walrus tusks. Scrimshaw of the 1820s featured primarily portraits of ships and whaling scenes, but this changed in the next two decades to include a huge variety of images and themes: female figures, family groupings, patriotic subjects, naval scenes, symbolic figures, scenes of Biblical, mythological, and theatrical, zoological and botanical origin, and urban, rural, religious, domestic, and exotic scenes. Herman Melville, a veteran whaleman, actually described it very well in Moby Dick (1851) as “lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material in the hours of ocean leisure.” Interestingly, there are women among the scrimshanders. Occasionally, the wives and children who would sometimes accompany whaling captains to sea, also produced scrimshaw in significant numbers. One, Sallie Smith, wife of Captain Frederick Howland Smith of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, produced particularly fine work. Scrimshaw remained a popular pastime until whaling ended. Though whaling today is practiced in part (native Alaskan tribes are permitted to hunt specified numbers), the art of scrimshaw disappeared until the 1960s when President John Kennedy’s passion for collecting them became known. Their popularity zoomed, but the ivory used is strictly regulated under the Marine Mammals’ Act and the Endangered Species Protection Law. Hippopotamus and warthog tusks, elk teeth, and antique ivories are used today by contemporary scrimshanders. Contemporary scrimshaw art experienced a resurgence in the 1970s with the formation of comprehensive scrimshaw studios in Bellingham on the West Coast and in Nantucket on the East Coast where groups of artists worked together in workshops producing commercial scrimshaw art and scrimshaw jewelry. My scrimshaw bookmarks were made by such an artist. Though I can no longer remember his name, I found them on eBay, but shortly after I purchased these the auction site banned the use of the word “ivory” in its ads. Even though the artist, who worked using old techniques he had been taught from a long-ago mentor, used old ivory piano keys he could no longer sell on the site. He planned to set up a website, but didn’t notify me of its address. I liked his work, and I liked that he did not take shortcuts or use newer materials even though they could be obtained legally. When I look at these and, yes, use them, I am reminded of both the pain of the animal whose body was ripped apart by harpoons merely to make piano keys, and of the beauty of the material that came from that mammal’s death. The work of the scrimshander is certainly part too. And each time I use one of them I feel myself become a part too along with the book it is in to mark my reading spot. Bookmark specifications: Scrimshaw bookmarks
Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately the same number of books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.
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While today scrimshaw refers to all kinds of carvings and engravings on ivory, bone, seashells, antlers, and cow horns, the original context of the word lies with the nineteenth-century mariners. The etymology of the word is an old one. Though my copy of the Oxford American Dictionary (2001) is uncertain about the origin of its name (“early 19th century: of unknown origin; perhaps influenced by the surname Scrimshaw”}, the art of decorating bone goes back much further. How much no one is certain but early humankind was decorating the bones of animals from early on. Norway’s Vikings carved domestic implements of walrus tusks, in Paris and elsewhere game pieces and chessmen were created, and there were even eleventh and twelfth-century votive carvings produced in English and Danish monasteries.