Ivory as an Amphibious Material

by John White   

In German, the word for “ivory” (Elfenbein) contains a direct reference to elephants. However, ivory is also sourced from other animals. Walruses, narwhals, and other animals have tusks, which artists around the globe have carved and worked for centuries. In the early Modern period (roughly 1400 to 1800), the carving and collecting of such animal materials coincided with artistic and scientific inquiries into the underlying organizing principles of nature. Wealthy European collectors gathered organic materials from around the world within a cabinet of curiosities (also called a Kunstkammer) in attempts to submit the wide diversity of natural specimens to manmade categories.

My dissertation examines ivory objects, particularly those coming from animals other than elephants, within the contexts of early Modern European collecting practices and colonial expansion. I argue that we must conceive of ivory as an “amphibious” artistic material, one that came from animals of both land and sea. My notion of “amphibiousness” is more metaphoric than scientific. All of the animals that I study are mammals, not amphibians. Nonetheless, animal categories in the early Modern period were evolving and in some cases mobile across land and water, such as the idea that there existed both the unicorn and the sea unicorn.

My project spans northern Europe, including the Dutch Republic and its whaling enterprise as well as German and Danish collections, and texts that evince a fascination with, and desire to control, the natural and especially oceanic worlds both near and far. This aquatic angle demonstrates how art and empire-building encompassed diverse geographies, animals, and artistic approaches. In my research, I have met with curators who described instances where they examined an ivory object for an exhibition and realized it was, for example, made from walrus ivory rather than elephant ivory. Highlighting the distinctions between different animal sources enables us to re-think the origins, trade, and material properties of a variety of ivory objects.

With the aid of a Decorative Arts Trust Research Grant, I traveled to Germany to study 17th-century ivory objects. Frankfurt’s Reiner Winkler Stiftung at the Liebieghaus contains one of Europe’s most significant collections of early Modern ivory artifacts. I then traveled to Dresden, where I met with Dirk Weber and Christine Nagel, Curators at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD), as well as the Head of Conservation, Rainer Richter, and conservator Lea Eulitz. Together we examined eight walrus and narwhal ivory objects in their collection, some of which have never been published. We spent the most time with a cup (figure 1) carved from walrus ivory possibly used to hold incense. The cup features areas where secondary dentine, a material with a marbled appearance only present in walrus ivory, is visible (figure 2). While in this object the areas of secondary dentine largely are concealed, such as on the underside of the lid, the visible presence of the material nonetheless allows the curators to readily identify the animal origin of the tusk without having to perform any interventions or tests.

We also examined two staffs made from narwhal ivory that feature the material’s characteristic spiral striations. These spiral lines were essential to early Modern identifications of narwhal tusks as supposedly the horns of (sea) unicorns. Many people in the early Modern period believed unicorn horns carried medicinal properties, such as counteracting poison. Thus, wealthy kings and princes often had such horns fashioned into objects that could be kept close at hand, like this staff (figure 3), in order to ward off ill will. The knob at the end of the staff, pictured here, can be unscrewed to reveal inside a scale for measuring distance, which suggests that it may also have had more practical functions. Although this example measures just shy of one meter in length, narwhal tusks can be as long as three meters. 

The opportunity to closely study these objects and their structural properties, such as the secondary dentine of the walrus ivory and the spiral striations of the narwhal ivory, was invaluable to the development of my dissertation, especially given its focus on materiality. The production of luxury ivory art objects in early Modern northern Europe entailed trade routes that expand our sense of the global scope of ivory beyond consideration of just African and Asian elephants. Hunters and traders also sourced the lucrative material of ivory from northern waterways, such as the Baltic Sea and northern Atlantic Ocean. This revised view of ivory allows us to consider how European colonial expansion sought to claim resources in both the global north and the global south, from both land and sea. Having examined these ivory objects and their material properties, I intend to trace some of the routes by which these materials would have traveled to inland cities of ivory production, like Augsburg, in inventories and price lists. I am grateful to the Decorative Arts Trust for the chance to meet with four SKD staff experts, discuss at length our observations about the objects, and see the objects anew. 

John White is a PhD student in the Art & Archaeology Department at Princeton University.