Charlemagne had two ivory gates of Byzantine workmanship. The episcopal chair of St. Vitalis, a work of the sixth century, is a fine specimen. Ivory seems to have become scarce in the twelfth century, and bone was largely used for carving, but during the middle ages ivory again became plentiful, and with the renaissance the art of carving reached perfection.
Florence, Flanders, and Germany were great centers. Cellini, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Dürer, and others tried the old-new art. In the seventeenth century there were many celebrated ivorists. Monks in cloisters frequently devoted a life to carving a crucifix; there are several specimens in different museums.
Schliemann, in his excavations at the supposed site of Troy, found many articles of ivory, useful and ornamental. The French town of Dieppe has had celebrated ivory factories since the fifteenth century, and is still extensively in the trade; but it is in the East, and especially in China, that ivory is most highly prized and worked into decorative forms.
No amount of care and patience is considered excessive among the Chinese in this work of ivory-cutting. This is evident in the extremely minute and delicate workmanship of their carved, lacelike trays, while their nests of concentric ivory balls are well known and are reckoned among the puzzles of industry.
The earliest recorded history—we might say prehistoric, the hieroglyphical—that has come down to us has been in carvings on ivory and bone. Long before metallurgy was known among the prehistoric races, carvings on reindeer horn and mammoth tusk, evidence the antiquity of the art. Fragments of horn and ivory, engraved with excellent pictures of animals, have been found in caves and beds of rivers and lakes. There are specimens in the British Museum, also in the Louvre, of the Egyptian skill in ivory carving, attributed to the age of Moses. In the latter collection are chairs or seats of the sixteenth century b. c. inlaid with ivory, and other pieces of the eleventh century b. c. We have already referred to the Nineveh ivories. Carving of the "precious substance" was extensively carried on at Constantinople during the middle ages. Combs, caskets, horns, boxes, etc., of carved ivory and bone, often set in precious stones, of the old Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods, are frequently found in tombs. Crucifixes and images of the Virgin and saints made in that age are often graceful and beautiful. The Chinese and Japanese are rival artists now in their peculiar minutiæ and detail.
Nothing is wasted in manipulating ivory; all dust, shavings, chips, and small pieces are utilized by being converted into gelatin, or ivory black, or artists' pigments; confectioners and chefs make use of ivory dust. Owing to the constantly increasing price, many attempts have been made to imitate ivory but with poor
