| Show IVORY ACT ITS USES WHY CARVED ORNAMENTS IN IVORY ARE VERY EXPENSIVE there arc few expert worker in ivory in tills country the price of elephant not greatly chancel Ch angel in ke beut year A catly luxury when whitelaw acid was in search of a workman to decorate apartments at ophir farm with rich and antiques brought over from europe he found that there was but one man in america who could do such work and he lay sick had mr acid been in search of skilled ivory carvers bo would have found them almost as scarce there are not above three or four ivory carvers ot approved skill in new york and hardly many in all the rest of the country the men who do such work aro paid high wages the year round whether busy or idle they are frenchmen germans and italians of the three the italians aro perhaps the most skillful since ivory carving has been an art in a high degree of perfection among the italians for centuries the most famous ivory carver living however is a frenchman moreau few of his masterpieces have been seen in america though two were sold at the famous morgan art sale of few years ago and two more held at a groat price aro now in the possession of a noted american jeweler tho ivory carvers of this country do little or nothing in the east indian or japanese manner nor do they occupy themselves with figure work their chief employment is in producing decorative toilet and stationery articles the rage for stained and carved ivory is of recent growth in the united states and the demand for such articles is not large as they are more costly than the same articles in silver would bo they were produced to tickle tho jaded esthetic palates of the rich and luxurious and only those who may trifle away what they will indulge themselves to any considerable degree in carved ivory in all such articles the cost of the raw material is small in comparison with that of the labor billiard balls are costly because they contain largo quantities of the finest ivory cut from the best part of tho tusk the labor cost of billiard balls is trifling as they are turned by machinery and rapidly thus it often happens that a single email article richly stained and carved will cost five times as much as a billiard ball containing ten times the weight of ivory the carvers of ivory use much the same tools as the wood carvers but of lighter and more delicate make the work is extremely tedious and laborious the carving ie usually done in low relief and the subjects are such as are suitable to this treatment persian do signs in delicate curves tho cactus with some varieties of palm and hints caught from those marvelously simple but ar distio carvings of tho alaskan indians the ivory is stained slightly so as to bring out the design and ia permitted to absorb moisture which it readily does in order to give it eliat fresh look common in newly manufactured articles of ivory the art of staining ivory is a guarded well by the carvers some notion of tho cost of ivory carving may be had from the fact that while a hand mirror framed in plain ivory may be had for ten or twelve dollars a mirror in carved ivory may cost or the small articles in carved ivory cost from five to twenty five dollars and a toilet pet in that material may fetch as high as tho american climate with its extremes of boat and cold is very trying upon ivory and ivory backed mirrors of european manufacture almost invariably crack the back after a few months of use upon this side of the atlantic tho american manufacturers have hit upon the cipe adient of leaving a space between glass and frame in order to allow for contraction and expansion nearly all trie ivory brought to the united states is bought in the great london market whore tho price is knocked about by bulls and bears who corner ivory they corner wheat or corn the african rather than the asiatic ivory is brought to this country though one of the largest tusks ever seen in this market eliat of a sacred east indian elephant has just been mounted id oriental style as a trophy of the chase the tusk measures more than els feet in length and retains the marks it bore when worn by the sacred beast to which it bo longed thanks to the predatory and murderous industry of tippa tib and his black baris the supply of ivory has kept pace with the increased demand resulting from its extended use in this country and the price for the raw material lias not permanently advanced few tusks of more than five feet in length come to this country and many are less than four feet long many of the tusks reach here after having been buried in africa for years to save them from thievish enemies of the savage owners every tusk must go through a process of seasoning long or short according as the process is natural or artificial before it ie made up into arti clea of ornament or use it is difficult to obtain a perfect 1 of ivory more than els inches in as alie upper end of the tusk which is the thickest is hollow and the material is coarser than that in the solid part of the tusk from the latter are made billiard balls and the most beautifully carved articles for the toilet and the writing desk from the coarser parts are made poker chips buttons and a hundred small articles every part of the tusk is put to use even the chips and sawdust are converted into ivory black by burning new york sun |
