Scrimshaw Sperm Whale Tooth, mid-late 19th Century
date: label: date made
content: 1850 - 1900
notes: label: Description
content: This classic example of scrimshaw has a portrait of a fashionable young woman pinpricked into the surface of a polished sperm whale’s tooth. The artist’s inexperience is evident in the overuse of the pinpricking technique, whereby a magazine illustration is wetted and smoothed on the surface of a tooth and then pricked through to get the subject’s outline. Nearly every detail of this carving is guided by the original illustration, with nothing left to interpretation. As a result, the woman’s face has a deep, dark outline where the original picture was shaded. Her headband is decorated with tiny flowers and some portions of her hair and accessories are incomplete, giving an unfinished look to the artwork.
label: Description
content: Scrimshaw began in the late 18th or early 19th century as the art of carving whale bone and ivory aboard whale ships. The crew on whalers had plenty of leisure time between sighting and chasing whales, and the hard parts of whales were readily available on voyages that could last up to four years.
label: Description
content: In its simplest form, a tooth was removed from the lower jaw of a sperm whale and the surface was prepared by scraping and sanding until it was smooth. The easiest way to begin an etching was to smooth a print over the tooth, prick the outline of the image with a needle and then “connect-the-dots” once the paper was removed. This allowed even unskilled craftsmen to create fine carvings. Some sailors were skilled enough to etch their drawings freehand. After the lines were finished, they were filled in with lamp black or sometimes colored pigments.
label: Description
content: Scrimshaw could be decorative, like simple sperm whale teeth, or they could be useful, as in ivory napkin rings, corset busks (stiffeners), swifts for winding yarn or pie crimpers. The sailor’s hand-carved scrimshaw was then given to loved ones back on shore as souvenirs of the hard and lonely life aboard long and dangerous voyages.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Maritime
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content: Cultures & Communities
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content: Scrimshaw
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content: Transportation
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content: Art
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Frederic A. Delano
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: DL.374501
label: catalog number
content: 374501
label: accession number
content: 135263
objectType: label: Object Name
content: tooth, whale
label: Object Name
content: scrimshaw tooth, whale
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: scrimshaw (overall production method/technique)
label: Physical Description
content: tooth (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 in; 10.16 cm