Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval

CHAPTER I.

Every description or account of Carvings in Ivory ought to include similar carvings in bone, of which last many remarkable examples are to be found in the South Kensington and other museums. The rarity and value of ivory frequently obliged workmen to use the commoner and less costly material.

In the strictest sense, no substance except the tusk of the elephant presents the characteristic of true ivory, which, “now, according to the best anatomists and physiologists, is restricted to that modification of dentine or tooth substance which, in transverse sections or fractures, shows lines of different colours or striæ proceeding in the arc of a circle, and forming by their decussations minute curvilinear lozenge-shaped spaces.” Upon this subject the reader should consult a valuable paper, read by professor Owen, before the Society of Arts, in 1856, and printed in their journal.

But, besides the elephant, other animals furnish what may also be not 

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improperly called ivory. Such as the walrus, the narwhal, and the hippopotamus. The employment of walrus ivory has ceased among southern European nations for a long time; and carvings in the tusks of that animal are chiefly to be found among remains of the mediæval and Carlovingian periods. In those ages it was largely used by nations of Scandinavian origin and in England and Germany. The people of the north were then unable to obtain and may not even have heard of the existence of true elephant ivory. In quality and beauty of appearance walrus ivory scarcely yields to that of the elephant.

Sir Frederick Madden tells us, in a communication published in the Archæologia, that “in the reign of Alfred, about a.d. 890, Ohtere, the Norwegian, visited England, and gave an account to the king of his voyage in pursuit of these animals, chiefly on account of their teeth. The author of the Kongs-Skugg-sio, or Speculum Regale (composed in the 12th century), takes particular notice of the walrus and of its teeth. Olaus Magnus, in the 15th century, tells us that sword-handles were made from them; and, somewhat later, Olaus Wormius writes, ‘the Icelanders are accustomed, during the long nights of winter, to cut out various articles from these teeth. This is more particularly the case in regard to chessmen.’” Olaus Wormius speaks in another place of rings against the cramp, handles of swords, javelins, and knives.

There is still another kind of real ivory—the fossil ivory—which is now extensively used in many countries, although it may be difficult to decide whether it was known to the ancients or to mediæval carvers. In prehistoric ages a true elephant, says professor Owen, “roamed in countless herds over the temperate and northern parts of Europe, Asia, and America.” This was the mammoth, the extinct Elephas primigenius. The tusks of these animals are found in great quantities in the frozen soil of Siberia, along the banks of the larger rivers. Almost the whole of the ivory turner’s work in Russia is from Siberian fossil ivory, and 

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the story of the entire mammoth discovered about half a century ago embedded in ice is well known to every one. Although commonly called fossil, this ivory has not undergone the change usually understood in connection with the term fossil, for their substance is as well adapted for use as the ivory procured from living species.

With regard to the tusks of elephants, African and Asiatic ivory must be distinguished. The first, “when recently cut, is of a mellow, warm, transparent tint, with scarcely any appearance of grain, in which state it is called transparent or green ivory; but, as the oil dries up by exposure to the air, it becomes lighter in colour. Asiatic ivory, when newly cut, appears more like the African, which has been long exposed to the air, and tends to become yellow by exposure. The African variety has usually a closer texture, works harder, and takes a better polish than the Asiatic.” It would be mere guessing to attempt to decide the original nature of ancient or mediæval ivories. Time has equally hardened and changed the colour of both kinds, whether African or Asiatic.

We cannot easily suggest any way in which the very large slabs or plaques of ivory used by the early and mediæval artists were obtained. The leaves of a diptych of the seventh century, in the public library at Paris, are fifteen inches in length by nearly six inches wide. In the British museum is a single piece which measures in length sixteen inches and a quarter by more than five inches and a half in width, and in depth more than half an inch. By some it is thought that the ancients knew a method, which has been lost, of bending, softening, and flattening solid pieces of ivory; others suppose that they were then able to procure larger tusks than can be got from the degenerate animal of our own day. Mr. McCulloch, in his dictionary of commerce, tells us that 60 lbs. is the average weight of an elephant’s tusk; but Holtzapffel, a practical authority, declares this to be far too high, and that 15 or 16 lbs. would be nearer the average. Be this as it may, pieces of the size above mentioned (and larger specimens probably exist) 

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could not be cut from the biggest of the tusks preserved in the South Kensington museum; although it weighs 90 lbs., is eight feet eleven inches long, and sixteen inches and a half in circumference at the centre. This tusk is the largest of five which were presented to the Queen by the king of Shoa about the year 1856, and given by Her Majesty to the museum. The other four weigh, respectively, 76 lbs., 86 lbs., 72 lbs., and 52 lbs. They are all, probably, male tusks. An enormous pair of tusks, weighing together 325 lbs., was shown in the Great Exhibition of 1851; but these, heavy as they were, measured only eight feet six inches in length, and did not exceed twenty-two inches in circumference at the base.

An ingenious mode of explaining how the great chryselephantine statues of Phidias and other Greek sculptors were made, is proposed and fully explained in detail by Quatremère De Quincy in his work on the art of antique sculpture. He gives several plates in illustration, more particularly Plate XXIX.; but none of them meet the difficulty of the large flat plaques. The natural form of a tusk would adapt itself easily, so far as regards the application of pieces of very considerable size, to the round parts of the human figure.

Mr. Hendrie, in his notes to the third book of the “Schedula diversarum artium” of Theophilus, says that the ancients had a method of softening and bending ivory by immersion in different solutions of salts in acid. “Eraclius has a chapter on this. Take sulphate of potass, fossil salt, and vitriol; these are ground with very sharp vinegar in a brass mortar. Into this mixture the ivory is placed for three days and nights. This being done, you will hollow out a piece of wood as you please. The ivory being thus placed in the hollow you direct it, and will bend it to your will.” The same writer gives another recipe from the Sloane manuscript (of 15th century), no. 416. This directs that the ingredients above mentioned “are to be distilled in equal parts, which would yield muriatic acid, with the presence of water. Infused in this 

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water half a day, ivory can be made so soft that it can be cut like wax. And when you wish it hardened, place it in white vinegar and it becomes hard.”

Sir Digby Wyatt, in a lecture read before the Arundel society, quotes these methods from Mr. Hendrie and adds another from an English manuscript of the 12th century: “Place the ivory in the following mixture. Take two parts of quick lime, one part of pounded tile, one part of oil, and one part of torn tow. Mix up all these with a lye made of elm bark.” These various recipes have been tried in modern days, and the experiments, hitherto, have completely failed.

Considerable variety of colour will be observed in the various pieces of any large collection, and much difference in the condition of them. Some, far from being the most ancient, are greatly discoloured and brittle in appearance; others retain their colour almost in its original purity and their perfect firmness of texture, seemingly unaffected by the long lapse of time. The innumerable possible accidents to which carved ivories may have been exposed from age to age will account for this great difference, and a happy forgetfulness, perhaps owing to a contemptuous neglect at first of their value and importance, may have been the cause of the comparatively excellent state and condition of many. Laid aside in treasuries of churches and monasteries, or put away in the chests and cupboards of great houses, the memory even of their existence may have passed away for century after century.

It does not appear that any good method is known by which a discoloured ivory can be bleached. All rough usage of course merely injures the piece itself, and removes the external surface. Exposure to the light keeps the original whiteness longer, and in a few instances may to some extent restore it. It need hardly be observed that any other attempt to alter the existing condition, whatever it may be, as regards the colour of an antique or mediæval ivory is to be condemned.

It is quite a different matter to endeavour to preserve works in ivory 

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which have suffered partial decomposition, and which can be kept from utter destruction only by some kind of artificial treatment. Almost all the fragments sent to England by Mr. Layard from Nineveh were in this state of extreme fragility and decay. Professor Owen suggested that they should be boiled in a solution of gelatine. The experiment was tried and found to be sufficiently effectual; and it is to be hoped that the present success will prove to be lasting. “Since the fragments have been in England,” says Mr. Layard, “they have been admirably restored and cleaned. The glutinous matter, by which the particles forming the ivory are kept together, had, from the decay of centuries, been completely exhausted. By an ingenious process it has been restored, and the ornaments, which on their discovery fell to pieces almost upon mere exposure to the air, have regained the appearance and consistency of recent ivory, and may be handled without risk of injury.”

We may think it to be sufficiently strange in tracing the early history of the art of carving or engraving in ivory, that we should be able easily to carry it, upon the evidence of extant examples, to an antiquity long before the Christian era: through the Roman, Greek, Assyrian, and Jewish people, up to an age anterior to the origin of those nations by centuries, the number of which it may be difficult accurately to count. These very ancient examples are of the earliest Egyptian dynasties: yet, between them and the date of the earliest now known specimens of works of art incised or carved in ivory there is a lapse of time so great that it may probably be numbered by thousands of years.

We must go back to prehistoric man for the proof of this; to a period earlier than the age of iron or of bronze; to the first—the drift—period of the stone age. We must go back, as Sir John Lubbock writes, “to a time so remote that the reindeer was abundant in the south of France, and probably even the mammoth had not entirely disappeared.” Lartet and Christy also (in their valuable publication, 

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the Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ) make a like remark: “It rests with the geologist, by indicating the changes which have occurred in the very land itself, to shadow out the period in the dim distance of that far antiquity when these implements, the undoubted work of human hands, were used and left there by primæval man.”

Within the last few years, in caves at Le Moustier and at La Madelaine in the Dordogne, numerous fragments have been found of tusks of the mammoth and of reindeer’s bone and horn, on some of which are incised drawings of various animals, and upon others similar representations carved in low relief. These objects have been engraved in several works by geologists and writers upon the important questions relating to prehistoric people; and copies of them may be found in Sir John Lubbock’s book, “The origin of Civilization,” already quoted from. Among them are drawings and carvings of fish, of a snake, of an ibex, of a man carrying a spear, of a mammoth, of horses’ heads, and of a group of reindeer.

Sir John Lubbock describes these works as showing “really considerable skill;” as “being very fair drawings;” as the productions of men to whom we must give “full credit for their love of art, such as it was.” But to speak of them in words so cold is less than justice. No one can examine the few fragments which as yet have been discovered without acknowledging their merit, and attributing them to what may very truly be called the hand of an artist. There can be no mistake for a moment as to many of the beasts which are represented.

Again: the sculptor has given us, in a spirited and natural manner, more than one characteristic quality of his subject: and we can recognise the heaviness and sluggishness of the mammoth as easily as the grace and activity of the reindeer. The results of the workman’s labour are not like the elephants and camels and lions of a child’s Noah’s ark—merely bodies with heads and four legs—but they are executed with the right feeling and in an artistic spirit: the animals 

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are carefully drawn, and often with much vigour. There is nothing conventional about them; they are far beyond and utterly different in style from the ugly attempts of really civilised people, such as the Peruvians or Mexicans, to say nothing of the works of the savages of Africa or New Zealand. They are true to nature.

The aboriginal nations of North and South America must certainly be spoken of as civilised, though it is curious to remember how great authorities seem to differ as to what civilisation means. Macaulay, in his Life of lord Clive, writing with a recklessness of statement not unusual with him when aiming at some picturesque contrast, describes the ancient Mexicans as “savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, and who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fishbones, and who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster.” But Bernal Diaz, whose report as an eye-witness has stood the test of years of later investigation and dispute, describes the appearance of the great cities from without as like the enchanted castles of romance, and full of great towers and temples. And within, “every kind of eatable, every form of dress, medicines, perfumes, unguents, furniture, lead, copper, gold, and silver ornaments wrought in the form of fruit, adorned the porticoes and allured the passer-by. Paper, that great material of civilisation, was to be obtained in this wonderful emporium; also every kind of earthenware, cotton of all colours in skeins, &c. There were officers who went continually about the market-place, watching what was sold, and the measures which were used.”

If we are to take the judgment of Lord Macaulay as our guide in determining what may be true civilisation, we must set down the Greeks in the reign of Alexander, or the Italians in the days of Leo the tenth, as “savages,” because they were ignorant of the electric telegraph; or ourselves now, because we cannot guide balloons through the air.

The sculptures and works of art in the ruined cities of Yucatan are also 

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to be thought of. Many engravings of them are given in Stephens’s central America.

Nor is it enough to say that the prehistoric carvings are merely true to nature. Their merit is clearly seen when compared with the plates of Indian drawings and picture writings in Schoolcraft’s history of the Indian tribes of the United States: or again, of a different character altogether, the illuminations in Indian and Persian manuscripts. In some respects these last are of the highest quality as regards execution, but the animals are generally drawn in a manner purely conventional, with scant feeling of truth or beauty, and little power of expressing it.