European Furniture, Silver, & Ceramics

European Furniture, Silver, & Ceramics

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 1. A Very Fine and Rare Whalebone Scrimshaw Wall Pocket, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Circa 1870.

Property from a Martha's Vineyard Collection

A Very Fine and Rare Whalebone Scrimshaw Wall Pocket, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Circa 1870

Lot Closed

April 19, 04:01 PM GMT

Estimate

2,500 - 3,500 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Martha's Vineyard Collection


A Very Fine and Rare Whalebone Scrimshaw Wall Pocket, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Circa 1870


mounted on a later carved wood and parcel-ebonized frame; together with documents from a whale ship


Height 29 in. by Width 25 ⅞ in.

The Breckenridge-Long Collection;
Frank Sylvia, Nantucket;
Sotheby's, New York, Barbara Johnson Whaling Collection: Part IV, December 16-17, 1983, lot 419. 
Robert Bishop, American Folk Sculpture (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc, 1972) no. 191, p. 115.
A. B. C. Whipple and the Editors of Time-Life Books, The Whalers (Alexandria: Time-Life Books, 1979), illus. p. 131.
A unique tour de force, it is one of the largest genuine single pieces of scrimshaw in existence. The wall pocket mounted on the wall and used to hold newspapers, letters and magazines. It was constructed by sectioning very large slabs of whalebone from the panbone and working them into extremely complex, open-carved pieces, which were joined with copper rivets and pins.