acid. Celluloid is familiar to us nowadays. In the form of bonzoline, into which it is said to enter, it is used largely for billiard balls; and a new French substitute—a caseine made from milk, called gallalith—has begun to be much used for piano keys in the cheaper sorts of instrument. Odontolite is mammoth ivory, which through lapse of time and from surroundings becomes converted into a substance known as fossil or blue ivory, and is used occasionally in jewelry as turquoise, which it very much resembles. It results from the tusks of antediluvian mammoths buried in the earth for thousands of years, during which time under certain conditions the ivory becomes slowly penetrated with the metallic salts which give it the peculiar vivid blue colour of turquoise.
Ivory Sculpture and the Decorative Arts.—The use of ivory as a material peculiarly adapted for sculpture and decoration has been universal in the history of civilization. The earliest examples which have come down to us take us back to prehistoric times, when, so far as our knowledge goes, civilization as we understand it had attained no higher degree than that of the dwellers in caves, or of the most primitive races. Throughout succeeding ages there is continued evidence that no other substance—except perhaps wood, of which we have even fewer ancient examples—has been so consistently connected with man’s art-craftsmanship. It is hardly too much to say that to follow properly the history of ivory sculpture involves the study of the whole world’s art in all ages. It will take us back to the most remote antiquity, for we have examples of the earliest dynasties of Egypt and Assyria. Nor is there entire default when we come to the periods of the highest civilization of Greece and Rome. It has held an honoured place in all ages for the adornment of the palaces of the great, not only in sculpture proper but in the rich inlay of panelling, of furniture, chariots and other costly articles. The Bible teems with references to its beauty and value. And when, in the days of Pheidias, Greek sculpture had reached the highest perfection, we learn from ancient writers that colossal statues were constructed—notably the “Zeus of Olympia” and the “Athena of the Parthenon.” The faces, hands and other exposed portions of these figures were of ivory, and the question, therefore, of the method of production of such extremely large slabs as perhaps were used has been often debated. A similar difficulty arises with regard to other pieces of considerable size, found, for example, amongst consular diptychs. It has been conjectured that some means of softening and moulding ivory was known to the ancients, but as a matter of fact though it may be softened it cannot be again restored to its original condition. If up to the 4th century we are unable to point to a large number of examples of sculpture in ivory, from that date onwards the chain is unbroken, and during the five or six hundred years of unrest and strife from the decline of the Roman empire in the 5th century to the dawn of the Gothic revival of art in the 11th or 12th, ivory sculpture alone of the sculptural arts carries on the preservation of types and traditions of classic times in central Europe. Most important indeed is the rôle which existing examples of ivory carving play in the history of the last two centuries of the consulates of the Western and Eastern empires. Though the evidences of decadence in art may be marked, the close of that period brings us down to the end of the reign of Justinian (527-563). Two centuries later the iconoclastic persecutions in the Eastern empire drive westward and compel to settle there numerous colonies of monks and artificers. Throughout the Carlovingian period, the examples of ivory sculpture which we possess in not inconsiderable quantity are of extreme importance in the history of the early development of Byzantine art in Europe. And when the Western world of art arose from its torpor, freed itself from Byzantine shackles and traditions, and began to think for itself, it is to the sculptures in ivory of the Gothic art of the 13th and 14th centuries that we turn with admiration of their exquisite beauty of expression. Up to about the 14th century the influence of the church was everywhere predominant in all matters relating to art. In ivories, as in mosaics, enamels or miniature painting it would be difficult to find a dozen examples, from the age of Constantine onwards, other than sacred ones or of sacred symbolism. But as the period of the Renaissance approached, the influence of romantic literature began to assert itself, and a feeling and style similar to those which are characteristic of the charming series of religious art in ivory, so touchingly conceived and executed, meet us in many objects in ivory destined for ordinary domestic uses and ornament. Mirror cases, caskets for jewelry or toilet purposes, combs, the decoration of arms, or of saddlery or of weapons of the chase, are carved and chased with scenes of real life or illustrations of the romances, which bring home to us in a vivid manner details of the manners and customs, amusements, dresses and domestic life of the times. With the Renaissance and a return to classical ideas, joined with a love of display and of gorgeous magnificence, art in ivory takes a secondary place. There is a want of simplicity and of originality. It is the period of the commencement of decadence. Then comes the period nicknamed rococo, which persisted so long. Ivory carving follows the vulgar fashion, is content with copying or adapting, and until the revival in our own times is, except in rare instances, no longer to be classed as a fine art. It becomes a trade and is in the hands of the mechanic of the workshop. In this necessarily brief and condensed sketch we have been concerned mainly with ivory carving in Europe. It will be necessary to give also, presently, some indications enabling the inquirer to follow the history—or at least to put him on the track of it—not only in the different countries of the West but also in India, China and Japan.
Prehistoric Ivory Carvings.—These are the result of investigations made about the middle of the 19th century in the cave dwellings of the Dordogne in France and also of the lake dwellings of Switzerland. As records they are unique in the history of art. Further than this our wonderment is excited at finding these engravings or sculptures in the round, these chiselled examples of the art of the uncultivated savage, conceived and executed with a feeling of delicacy and restraint which the most modern artist might envy. Who they were who executed them must be left to the palaeontologist and geologist to decide. We can only be certain that they were contemporary with the period when the mammoth and the reindeer still roved freely in southern France. The most important examples are the sketch of the mammoth (see Painting, Plate I.), on a slab of ivory now in the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, the head and shoulders of an ibex carved in the round on a piece of reindeer horn, and the figure of a woman (instances of representations of the human form are most rare) naked and wearing a necklace and bracelet. Many of the originals are in the museum at St Germain-en-Laye, and casts of a considerable number are in the British Museum.
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| Fig. 3.—Panel with Cartouche, Nineveh. |
Ancient Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman Ivories.—We know from ancient writers that the Egyptians were skilled in ivory carving and that they procured ivory in large quantities from Ethiopia. The Louvre possesses examples of a kind of flat castanets or clappers, in the form of the curve of the tusks themselves, engraved in outline, beautifully modelled hands
