Thread: How to tell Bone from Ivory?

I thought it might be useful to gather up most of my ivory hafted gear and get a picture or six. As I was carrying all these over to the spot I take pictures, my wife saw them and went 'RAD!'

Anyway, the appearance of ivory can vary a great deal depending on how it's been stored, cared for and restored. It's a bit difficult to get good pictures of because what gives it its characteristic appearance is actually structures inside the material. Auto-focus cameras have a very hard time getting a lock because the edges of the pattern are indistinct and subtly change from viewing angle. It can be easier to visualize the appearance by doing heavy photo-manipulation.

Here's that same picture, but punched way up so the patterns of the ivory are more visible.



With it in-hand and a good strong light you'll be able to see the patterns pretty easily by just slightly moving the piece around, but they won't be as vivid as this picture. I punched it up like that because it makes it easier to see what you're looking for. Also notice that not all of them have obvious patterning. If you get closer in, things change.





If you right click on the images and choose 'view' you'll get higher res versions than the forum shows in posts. You can see that some which look featureless from a distance have very fine, relatively even lines. The patterns vary based a medium-density collection of factors.

(That weird scalpel-looking thing with the seal-tail end is a mid-Victorian Joseph Rodgers ink eraser)

You can see the lines in this brush also:

That's a Beauty, Spendur.

Nice razor my friend

This is the razor mentioned by pixelfixed earlier. The photo is from the owner. It shows the detail in the ivory scale pretty well.

Some more (vintage) ivory scaled razors to show a bit of variation in the markings:





Some have hardly any striations at all. In one, the lighter mottlings were almost see-through. I think the patterning depends on how close to the inside core the of the tusk the scale comes from.

Regards,
Neil