Learning How to Scrimshaw

I have very little formal art education but have a life long interest in the arts. I started scrimshawing about 20 years ago.  This book started as a hand-out for classes I have taught in scrimshaw at the J. C. Campbell folk school and at several blacksmithing conferences.  Over time, this hand-out has become more complete and started to look like the first drafts of a book. As a collector of scrimshaw books I became aware that there was very little still in print on the subject, so I decided to write this book to demonstrate that scrimshaw is not that difficult to learn.  This art form is being practiced by only a hand full of people today and is my wish that this effort will encourage others to take it up.

Let’s start first with the word scrimshaw.  The word scrimshander is thought to be of Dutch origin and means “Idle Fellow” or someone with a lot of extra time on his hands.  It certainly can take up a fellow’s time.  Scrimshaw, in my definition, is a very time intensive art form.  Partly because of this and because of a limited awareness of its existence, it is a dying art form.

Probably, the most common scrimshaw to be found today is on the handles of custom made knives.  The original site for most scrimshaw was a whale’s tooth and whales’ teeth are about as scarce as hen’s teeth today.  However, there are numerous other materials that are less legally volatile and much easier to find. These will be discussed later.  Presentation or display pieces are also common.  I will give you the web sites of what I consider to be some of the most beautiful scrimshaw work available today, however these sites certainly are not the only one’s out there.

Scrimshaw is cutting pictures into a medium such as whales’ teeth, whalebone or baleen.  More recently, elephant ivory, other animal ivories, bones and other material are being used. There also exist a number of man made materials that place no demands on the endangered species or environment.   A more expanded definition of scrimshaw includes other items fashioned from whalebone and similar material available to the whaler or other craftsman.  These items include such things as boxes, bookmarks, baskets and far more other items than I can mention here.  This, however, is not the focus of this book.

I considered calling this the “you don’t need to draw to scrimshaw” book. I make this claim because I for one do not draw that well and yet believe I have produced some very nice work using the techniques I will out-line in this book.