Musings

I’ve Only Got One Word to Say – “Holy Cow!”

My never-dormant interest in and work on tortoiseshell and ivory recently led me to acquiring and playing with an amazing new imitation ivory.   Brought to us by ivory artist David Warther, whose enterprise  in dealing in certified vintage ivory was shut down by the previous batch of knuckleheads in Mordor-on-the-Potomac (given the revolving door of knuckleheadery in Morder, I have to specify).  Like me David has been exploring alternatives to the use of an amazing natural material with engineered substitutes.  My correspondence with him led me to Resin-Ivory (TM) as a raw material for use in the studio.

The creators of Resin-Ivory have managed to blend the polymer technology of crosslinked polyester with the artistic morphology of striated composites.  Somehow these manufacturers have figured out how to mimic the working properties of the ivory (not perfectly but pretty close) with the grain patterns endemic to ivory, even to the point of inducing very faint  Shreger Lines, those Spirograph-like patterns that are evident on the end grain of true elephant ivory.

I’ve played with the material enough to know it is going to become a staple in my studio (and the prices are crazy modest).  I was very impressed with its properties in cutting and carving, and spent about five minutes doing some checkering.  The only thing I noticed was that occasionally the checkering cutters needed to be cleaned with a stiff brush, a step that is never needed when working genuine ivory.

I think my next big use for this material will be making a new wedge for the infill smoother I rescued earlier.  Stay tuned.