Ivory

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Will / Once you've been amongst them, there is no such thing as too much gun.
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If anything be of note, let it be he was once an elephant hunter, hoping to wind up where elephant hunters go.

24 September 2006, 19:00

Kamo Gari

A few other shots of ivory. Pretty amazing work, I think. From the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. Picture quality poor as a result of shooting througuh glass. Understandable, however. Had it not been cased, I'd have rubbed on it for sure...

25 September 2006, 07:01

Use Enough Gun

The detail is absolutely incredible and truly amazing!

25 September 2006, 08:19

Michael Robinson

The shape of those British Museum tusks is so classically perfect that it makes one want to cry in painful longing for the days when elephant with those kind of teeth could still be found in the wild.

And KG, that tooth in the Peabody Essex Museum is exquisite. I have to get up there to see it in person.

26 September 2006, 17:48

Glum

Does anybody have any further information on those tusks in the London Museum besides the following text which accompanied the tusks? :

"These magificent elephant tusks are believed to be the heaviest ever recorded. They are said to have cme from a bull elephant killed near Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa by an Arab hunter who had been trailing it for several weeks. They were sold in Zanzibar, off the Tanzanian coast in 1896.
The Heavier of the two (on the left), 3,11 metres long and weighing 94 kilograms(207 pounds), was later purchased by the Museum for Â£350. The ther tusk, 3,18 metres long and weighing 89(196 pounds) kilograms, was sold to the Museum in 1933 for an unspecified amount.

Another pic from the museum:

26 September 2006, 18:57

nainital

Of course the pictured giant tusks are not the biggest recorded. The quoted story belongs to the Kilimanjaro ElephantÂ´s tusks, weighing nowadays some 226 and 214 pounds due to dryng. Originally these weighed 237 1/2 and 226 1/2 pounds and are well kept at the Natural History Museum in New York.

26 September 2006, 19:10

Bwana1

No- they are not in New York. The heaviest tusks are in the British Museum of Natural History-London.I saw them there years ago. At the time, they were not on display. You had to ask to view them and were taken into the basement where they were kept..

27 September 2006, 01:31

Dago Red

Are there any artisans left that can carve ivory that way? seems a much better way of utilizing it than just putting them on the wall.

Red

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