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- Ivory in China
Ivory has held a long and prominent place in the arts of China. The Chinese were probably the first civilization to work ivory. The Chinese rank the carving of ivory next only to jade in desirability of material. However they did not endow it with the great sacred and poetic qualities of jade or even of bamboo, which also has a body of literature devoted to its rusticity and simplicity. Ivory was appreciated for its great sensual appeal, warm tones, the patina it gains with age and its strong and dense hardness. Its close grained texture, smooth surface, lack of brittleness and the fact that it does not easily split, makes it ideal for extremely fine carving. Staining, painting and inlaying the ivory also achieved additional decorative effects.
The ivory workers of China used the same tools as those of the wood and bamboo craftsmen: saws, files, chisels, gouges, bow drills and knives. They polished the end product with increasingly fine abrasives ending with a moist bamboo skin and pumice powder and finally a damp cloth. Ivory, like jade, was considered quite valuable so before the ivoiy craftsman commenced carving he would plan the subject and use the natural shape to maximum advantage, adding little and taking away as little as possible to preserve the integrity of the shape. The thickness and density of ivory allowed for deep undercutting to create many layers of spatial recession and piercing and openwork decoration in an area less than five centimeters in width. As well as carving in the round and reliefs, further forms of decoration were achieved by incising and emphasizing the design with ink.
Chinese ivory carvers over the ages have used the tusks of three elephant species for carving. The most important sources for ivory tusks were from:
1) the Indian elephant, from India, Southeast Asia into China,
2) several sub-species of the African elephant. African tusks were the most prized and the largest, weighing up to 70 to 90 kilograms and,
3) the tusk of the mammoth, which became extinct about 20,000 years ago. This found ivory, from native sources and imported from the Asian Steppes (Siberia), was of lesser interest and was often used for inlays.
Ancient folklore in China claims that the designs in elephant tusks were made when the elephant was frightened by thunder. There are other natural materials that have some resemblance to elephant ivory, but none have the crosshatched appearance as discussed previously. Organic carving companions for ivory have been plentiful in China, both in ancient and modern times and include walrus ivory, narwhal ivory, hippopotamus teeth, rhinoceros horn and beak of the hornbill bird, to name a few. The latter two enjoyed some popularity.
Ivory has been a precious commodity and an important material for carving in China since Neolithic times around 5000 BCE. Surviving early examples of ivory carvings are rarely excavated and this is largely due to the fact that ivory is organic and easily degrades. Art historians often have to look at contemporary bone carvings for possible comparisons in carving styles. Both bone and ivory carvers would have used similar tools as wood carvers. The fact that they degrade after long burial make excavated carved bone and ivory artifacts difficult to differentiate.
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