We’ve been busier at home than on the site throughout the winter which has finally left us. We’ve been busy creating illustrations, testing out alternative materials and doing too little scrimshawing.
Scrimspirations – Book 1 is a collection of photos with accompanying illustrations created especially for scrimshaw artists. Each photo comes with hand lined templates from 0.5″ up to 3.0″ so you can easily transfer the image to your material of choice.
Some of the materials we’ve worked on include acrylic – an easy to use plastic that comes in many colors, “alternative ivory” – a molded polyester with a grain pattern, paper micarta, used most often as knife handles, casein – which is a plastic made from milk (we were able to get some from England where they stopped making it in the late ’70’s) and other materials. We’ll be showing our findings here over the next several weeks.
There are laws they are attempting to pass that could impact the use and sale of ivory which are alarming not only to scrimshaw artists, but musicians as well. In short, the previous laws passed to protect the whales was well thought out and measured. The laws they are currently debating, if passed, would make it very difficult if not impossible to re-enter the country with musical instruments which have ivory as their parts (such as guitars, violin bows, pianos, bagpipes and more) without being confiscated. read more here.
The New Bedford Whaling Museum will host the 26th annual Scrimshaw Weekend May 16-18. This internationally renowned event is the world’s only regular forum where collectors, dealers, curators, folk art and whaling history buffs share their interests in the indigenous art of whalers. see more at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
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as well as 
, and an interesting palm nut called an Ivory nut from the Solomon Islands which is difficult to find and expensive.
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“. and cellulose nitrate – though this is considered a hazardous material. The problem with cellulose nitrate is that it is explosively flammable. Used as an alternative to ivory for billiard balls back in the 1800’s, a poorly held cigar or too hard a hit would make the billiard balls explode with a report similar to a gunshot. People would hit the deck, draw their guns and sometimes overreact: “… An owner of a billiard saloon in Colorado wrote to Hyatt about the explosive tendencies, saying that he did not mind very much personally but for the fact that every man in his saloon immediately pulled a gun at the sound. …“(