Scrimshaw Sperm Whale’s Tooth, Mid-19th Century

On this tooth, the scrimshaw artist has etched a young, short-haired girl in profile, walking from left to right. She is very well dressed in a flowered dress, pantaloons and high button shoes. In her left hand is a ball and cup game, with the ball high in the air at the end of the string.

This tooth is one of a pair with Cat. 37489, which is the same size and has a very similar subject by the same artist. The daisies on the girl’s dress and patch of ground beneath her feet are identical to the same features on the companion tooth.

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.

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.

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.

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