Scrimshaw or needle engraving

The history of Scrimshaw engraving

Scrimshaw engraving history is very ancient. It springs in the eskimo culture. They used to engrave their drawings on marine mammals bones or ivory (walrus tusks or whalebon plates) as well as on reindeers horn. They incised the material using a hard needle made in a fishbone.
It is believed those people got inspired by rupestrian frescos!

At the beginning of the XIXth century, the sailors, particularly the whalers, took up this sculpting technique as a hobby so as to get their long evenings busy and when the wind had dropped. Their sperm whale tooth engraving was made with metal needles and even sail awls or knives. It also adorned the powder horns on the muskets and flint guns.
The first sailors known as users were Bretons. The Scrimshaw name comes from the Celtic « Chäm charch » which meant « useless work». By phonetic distorsion, the English language tranlated it into Scrimshaw.

Nowadays, knives handles, revolvers and pistol butts, or only inlays are adorned with Scrimshaw engraving.

The technique

Scrimshaw is a needle engraving technique. This ancestral technique did not change much.

1- The materials :

First of all, the engraver needs a surface perfectly clean and even (the object is finely sandpapered and then polished.)
This surface has to have important density to resist time, to avoid the ink to spread, to make precise and neat impacts with the needle.
We make scrimshaw on ivory :
- elephant ivory (CITES agreement),
- african whartog ivory,
- fossilized mammoth ivory.
Horn is not really suitable for engraving.

2- The making :

The client choose a pattern. Our engraver Jean-Michel draws the outline of the pattern with a spike. The patterns are covered up with indelible Indian ink. The surface stains have to be sponged, then ink is left drying. The ink is wiped with a wet cloth. Only the furrows inlayed with ink remain (in former days, black powder was used on boats.)
This sketching out is carried out dot after dot to give the pattern its shape, as well as the relief and the shades wished.
In the end, Jean-Michel covers up the drawing with Indian ink. The ink settles in every crater which has been dug and the final pattern is revealed.

Scrimshaw : a unique pattern for a unique knife.

Jean-Michel Cayron completes those Scrimshaw in our workshops on full handles or under the form of inlays. The realism of the final result is quite impressive.

Scrimshaw brings :
- a prestigious touch which makes it a collection objet (its artistic carrying out)
-and a unique object touch (the character of an original drawing).