Kill from something beautiful. Ivory-finished weapon
Wheel musket, ca. 1600. On a wooden butt and a bed of ivory inlay, and very fine workmanship. The Royal Treasury Museum at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden
“Skill is spit, do you hear?
Now you will not find a single tolerable pen.
Canes are made, but the knobs are finished! ..
Find me a good pen and I'll pay you twenty francs!
It spoke the artist's pride.
No craftsman in Paris could make pens
like the ones he made, so light and strong.
He especially liked to carve knobs.
and did it with charming ingenuity,
a variety of subjects, depicting flowers,
fruits, animals, heads;
his work has always been graceful and lively.
All he needed was a penknife;
saddling his nose with glasses, he is from morning to night
cut boxwood or ebony."
Emile Zola "Lady's Happiness"
Now you will not find a single tolerable pen.
Canes are made, but the knobs are finished! ..
Find me a good pen and I'll pay you twenty francs!
It spoke the artist's pride.
No craftsman in Paris could make pens
like the ones he made, so light and strong.
He especially liked to carve knobs.
and did it with charming ingenuity,
a variety of subjects, depicting flowers,
fruits, animals, heads;
his work has always been graceful and lively.
All he needed was a penknife;
saddling his nose with glasses, he is from morning to night
cut boxwood or ebony."
Emile Zola "Lady's Happiness"
stories about weapons. If Master Burra was indignant at the Lady's Happiness store for having beaten off the buyers of umbrellas from him, despite the fact that he skillfully carved handles for them, he could not do anything with progress. But ... there was one industry where, even after almost complete mechanization, a certain proportion of manual labor was preserved, and just in his, Burra's, taste. This is the manufacture of original gift samples of weapons. There, they spared neither manual labor, nor materials, nor expenses. For example, Samuel Colt had a whole department that was engaged in the production of expensive exclusive revolvers "as a gift." And if the price of a standard 1873 Peacemaker revolver was 12 dollars, then in a gift version it could cost all 400 ...
For example, this Dragoon model revolver and another to match it were created as part of a set of three pairs of gold-encrusted revolvers that Colt took with him to Europe in 1854. This year saw the start of the Crimean War, in which Russia clashed with Turkey and its allies, Great Britain and France. And Colt tried to sell weapons to both warring parties. In November 1854, he presented the Russian Tsar Nicholas I with three gold-encrusted revolvers, one of each pair. Of these, the third Dragoon model with serial number 12407 is now in the Hermitage (St. Petersburg) and is a pair of museum pistols with serial number 12406. The gift clearly testified to the technical perfection of the production of Colt revolvers, and, of course, patriotism their own manufacturer. This revolver depicts a portrait of George Washington and the emblem of the United States, and on the revolver donated to the Russian emperor, a view of the Capitol building in Washington and "trophies" as the personification of the power of American industry. By the way, the king bought his revolvers. But not enough. So few that there were not enough of them for all the officers in Sevastopol. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
We somehow already talked about how knightly armor and weapons were decorated, examined in detail all the technologies used. But now the time is gone. Knightly tournaments have sunk into oblivion, and hunting has spread among the nobles, replacing them with tournament fun.
And now they began to richly decorate not armor, but first of all hunting weapons. And since there were many nobles, and their wealth varied, cheaper finishing material began to come into fashion, which was ... ivory! Moreover, its availability, as well as the availability of bone in general (ivory could be easily faked by replacing the usual bovine one!), made it possible to massively decorate not only hunting, but also military weapons.
A typical hunting scene: entirely made in the technology of convex carving on ivory. A hunter sets a dog on a deer from behind a tree. Wheel gun 1660 Westphalia. Weight: 4 g. Dimensions: total length 430 mm, barrel length 1 mm. The Royal Treasury Museum at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden
Elephant tusk ivory has been valued since ancient times and used to create small sculptures. It is easy to cut, which allows carvers to achieve high artistic and emotional expression in a very highly compressed image format, which is especially valuable in weapons. After polishing, the lustrous ivory surface is pleasant to the touch and is especially suitable for those parts that have to be pressed against the cheek or taken in hand. True, some slipperiness is characteristic of it, but they put up with it for the sake of handles exclusively exquisitely carved from this bone.
Hunting sword hilt. Attributed to master Josef Deutschmann, Germany, Munich. Rococo shell and wave carving, first recorded in the armory of the Elector of Bavaria in Munich in the 1740s. The lion at the top of the handle holds a crescent moon under its paw, which probably alludes to recent European victories over the Ottoman Turks in Eastern Europe. Dimensions: length 74,9 cm; blade length 59 cm; blade width 2,8 cm; weight: 510,29 g; scabbard weight 624 g. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Interestingly, most ivory carvings in Europe are made from the bones of African elephants. In addition to its creamy light color, African ivory is notable for its extraordinary workability; its response to cutting and polishing is unique. Due to the fine striated microstructure of its grain, it allows the carving of the smallest details. The gelatinous substance released from its pores facilitates the work of the carver and gives the product a characteristic soft sheen when polished.
Wheel rifle, ca. 1680–1690 Craftsman: Johann Michael Maucher. Belonged to the most famous Swabian ivory, wood and amber carvers. He specialized in the decoration of intricately carved walnut stocks, inlaid with ivory panels with relief images of hunting scenes and allegorical figures. Firearms with such lavish decoration seem to have been valued more for their artistic finish than for their practical use as, well, sporting weapons. Dimensions: length 105,7 cm; barrel length 78,3 cm; caliber 14,2 mm; the weight. 3 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A feature of wheeled guns of this type was the presence in them of a case for spare bullets and wads, which was cut out in the butt on the right. It was usually closed with a sliding lid, which was either wooden, or bone, or brass. The bone cover of this rifle is decorated with a convex image of a half-naked woman. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
On the stock of the same gun, a decorative bone die with slotted carvings is already used. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The top of the ramrod is also made of bone, and the end of the stock and the beginning of the channel for the ramrod are trimmed with bone. These details needed to be strengthened, and bone, as a material that is stronger than wood, was excellent for this purpose. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
For thousands of years, craftsmen have developed special tools for carving bone.
In addition, both the form itself and the structure of the elephant tusk are far from being as simple as it seems, so cutting them into “working material” requires a lot of experience and certain knowledge. Although African elephant tusks can be more than three meters long and weigh more than 80 kilograms, not all of the horn can be processed. It has a void about a third of the base. The bone around it is thin and deep carving on it is impossible. However, many thin plates can be made from this part of the tusk, the images on which are not cut out, but scratched with a special needle.
Only tapering hard ends (rarely over 20 cm in diameter) were used for round sculpture. Of course, from such a piece you can do a lot of things. And we can say that master carvers at the European courts of the XNUMXth century succeeded in creating complex compositions from a single piece of tusk, from which they made not only sculptures, but also the handles of swords, daggers and pistols.
For example, these pistols are part of a luxurious inventory of an 1762th century ivory hunting set made for Empress Catherine the Great (r. 1796-1786), whose initial (E - Catherine) was inscribed on the grips. The set, which originally consisted of these pistols, a 1732 hunting rifle (National Museum, Warsaw) and a rifle (whereabouts unknown), was later given to her favourite, Prince Stanisław August Poniatowski (1798–1763), whom she supported as King of Poland (for years reign 1795-1755). Firearms with ivory stocks had by this time fallen out of fashion in Western Europe, but continued to be in vogue at the Russian court in the last quarter of the 1790th century. Gunsmith: Johan Adolf Grecke (St. Petersburg, recorded XNUMX–XNUMX). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The thinner walls of the hollow end were used for vessels such as mugs and goblets, or cut along the length of the tusk into sheets used for relief carving. Carvers with pleasure carved their compositions on them, and even on very thin sheets, then glued into the recesses carved in the tree. So, on the guns they decorated the butts and stocks of the guns.
Decor element of a wheeled hunting rifle. Nuremberg. Around 1580. Weight: 3 g. Dimensions: barrel length 580 mm, total length 868 mm. The drawing depicts hunting with dogs for a bear. Moreover, the tree, as a background, occupies a smaller area than bone intarsia. The Royal Treasury Museum at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden
When was African ivory first introduced to Europe? It is known that it was supplied already in the X century. But then it was not used to decorate weapons. Religious figurines, reliquary caskets, and the tops of episcopal croziers were made from it. Around 1350, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean became an obstacle to trade in this material, which may have led to great problems in Europe.
Petrinal. Aachen, late 3th century. The stock is made of walnut, with a characteristic curved down butt. Almost continuous decor in white and green tones, with curb moldings. The reverse side shows a hunting scene in the form of a bear standing on its hind legs, which is attacked by a dog and bites on its front paw. The bear looks back at the hunter and another dog, and the hunter is dressed in a kilt and wide trousers. The ground, foliage of trees and bushes are painted green. Used in the battle of Mitava. Weight: 780 g. Dimensions: total length 1 mm, barrel length 200 mm. The Royal Treasury Museum at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden
At the end of the XNUMXth century, Portuguese navigators, who were looking for a way to Asia bypassing the Ottoman territories, began to sail along the western coast of Africa and established trade relations with the native kingdoms in the territory of modern Sierra Leone and Benin, who brought ivory to the coast from the depths of the continent. Portuguese merchants bought raw ivory from them and commissioned pieces from skilled African carvers for export to Europe. As a result of the initial contacts, a small stream of wonderful objects, created with the tastes of foreign collectors in mind, rushed to the European market.
Our masters from the Kremlin Armory did not lag behind their foreign colleagues at that time and for the needs of the royal family they produced excellent weapons, including richly decorated ivory (although they often replaced it with a less scarce "walrus tooth"). Often they were given to foreign sovereigns. So our weapons ended up in foreign royal arsenals. Before us is one of these guns of the late XVII century. Weight 4 g. Dimensions: total length 780 mm, barrel length 1 mm. The Royal Treasury Museum at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden
Portuguese navigators and merchants, impressed by the high quality of the ivory carvings they encountered on the coast of West Africa, began commissioning local craftsmen for hybrid works that combined European images and forms with African ornamentation. These were utilitarian spoons with figured handles, and more complex salt shakers, and also hunting horns, intended primarily for collectors who admired their excellent quality and African exoticism.
According to contemporary sources, the Duke of Florence, Cosimo I de' Medici, owned several African ivory carvings, as did the Grand Dukes of Saxony and Tyrol. It is believed that Albrecht Dürer bought two African salt shakers in the Netherlands sometime around 1521.
The use of ivory for sculpture declined in the late Middle Ages, due to the decline of the ivory trade between Europe and Africa after the Ottoman conquest of North Africa. European sculptors began to turn to boxwood, which has some common features with ivory. However, the period of ivory shortage was short-lived.
Ivory powder flask with clock, South Germany (Augsburg-Nuremberg?) c.1620–1630. On the obverse, two savages as shield holders in helmets hold an oval shield topped with a helmet and a helmet decoration. On the shield in the form of an oval, perforated gilded brass plate, the coat of arms of the Duchy of Pomerania. Behind the shield is a clock mechanism. The reverse depicts two hunters and a deer they have caught. The watch bears the date: 1618 Weight: 602 The Royal Treasury Museum in the Royal Palace of Stockholm, Sweden
The same powder flask, the watch cover is open. The Royal Treasury Museum at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden
Between 1600 and the middle of the XNUMXth century, an intensive revival of ivory carving began, which was associated with the resumption of the influx of this valuable material into Europe after the discovery of new sea routes along the eastern and western coasts of Africa. This revival coincided with the development of the Baroque style, primarily in the Netherlands and Central Europe. Emperors and princely patrons of this art form even introduced the court positions of bone carvers.
Gunpowder horn made by Mas Masson, Norway, 1698. For less wealthy hunters, craftsmen found a substitute for ivory and made powder flasks from ordinary bull horns. But… they covered them with intricate carvings, so that these utilitarian objects also became real works of art. Product weight 133 g. Royal Treasury - Museum in the Royal Palace of Stockholm, Sweden
To be continued ...
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