Ivory Carving on Sailors' Folk Art

Scrimshaw, the whalemen’s craft of engraving and carving the byproducts of the sperm-whale hunt: tooth ivory, panbone (jaw bone), and baleen. Sailors incised pictorial scenes into polished sperm-whale teeth and rubbed lampblack or pigment into the lines, and shaped functional pieces such as swifts, busks, pie crimpers, and walking-stick handles. The craft flourished aboard American whaleships roughly 1820 to 1880, when long voyages left idle off-watch hours. The largest documented scrimshaw collections are held at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Mystic Seaport Museum.