The Natural History Museum Inspired This! (part 1)

For me, a day spent in a natural history museum is always a day well spent! One of my favorites, The Harvard Museum of Natural History, also happens to be rather nearby. I've been visiting on a fairly regular basis for years now, and the exhibits there have definitely inspired many of my creative crafts projects. I thought it might be fun to share a few of my favorites that I've made through the years!



"Songbirds" is a pretty big (30" x 36") display that I made about six years ago after finding an old shoebox full of decorative birds at a flea market outside of Chicago. There was such a nice variety of birds in that shoebox; it was like finding an instant collection, so I decided it would be a shame not to keep them all together as a group! I have always enjoyed seeing the various ways that birds are displayed at museums, and determined that I should construct my own display based loosely on some of those at the Harvard Museum.

The background wedges consist of canvas stretched over pieces of Gator Board (a tougher, more rigid form of foamcore) then painted. The title letters are die-cut cardboard letters I found as a set at a thrift store and painted to complement the blue-green background. The birds are perched on painted wooden dowels mounted onto the background; they are each numbered with old-fashioned numbered map pins that correspond to a list of feathered warblers that I silkscreened onto the bottom center triangle. The display is six inches deep, and is a little difficult to photograph well because of its protective Plexiglas face! Following are a few detail photographs:







I Thank You for joining me, and hope you will join me again when I post the next installment of "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!"

Recent Finds #2 and More Relics of the Old Whaling Days

Earlier in the month, Anne and I took a drive down to Mystic, Connecticut to experience B.F. Clyde's, the only steam-powered apple cider mill in the U.S. It was a lovely fall day; perfect weather for apple cider and cider donuts! Amply nourished, we commenced a lazy automobile tour of the area, and ended up poking around a few antiques stores and a fun Goodwill store in Groton, Connecticut. The Goodwill visit yielded the glass-domed dried weed arrangement pictured above for a more than reasonable .99 cents, and a very old pad of manila paper for .50 cents: perfect for any project calling for old-looking labels or tags!

A local antiques shop made for some entertaining browsing, but my purchase was limited to a small corked bottle of mysterious oil, procured for $2.99. I desperately wanted it to be an old bottle of whale oil to enhance my modest collection of nautical and whaling related artifacts, and it might well be, though it was unlabeled, and the thoroughly stuck cork will prevent me from ever truly knowing!

I thought the little bottle rather closely resembled some I had seen in a whaling display at Mystic Seaport. The display featured a wooden box containing bottled samples of oil taken from each whale captured during the 1875-1878 voyage of the whaleship Ohio:







Curious to glean a bit more information regarding what a bottle of whale oil might look like, I searched the online object collection of the wonderful Whaling Museum in nearby New Bedford, Massachusetts, and was intrigued by an entry for a bottle of "Spermacity [sic] taken direct from the cooling tank by the cooper on the last voyage of the Charles W. Morgan". Below is a picture of the bottle, courtesy of the Whaling Museum:





The Charles W. Morgan is the only surviving wooden whaleship from the 1800's. It is on permanent display at Mystic Seaport, where it is currently undergoing a thorough restoration. Though the Whaling Museum's aluminum foil-topped bottle of "spermacity" might leave something to be desired aesthetically, I was greatly impressed by the powerfully evocative nature of such an artifact; I couldn't help but imagine the cooper's urgent desire to preserve a little bit of that slippery stuff that had been the Morgan's very raison d'être, on what he knew would be the last of her 37 successful whaling voyages.

Thusly inspired and, as ever, not much of a stickler for authenticity, I determined that, for my own enjoyment, my little bottle of mystery oil might easily be transformed into an artifact of the old whaling days. The real value of any artifact on display, whether authentic or not, is it's power to vividly evoke a sense of the time or circumstance during which the object originated. That old "spermacity" bottle in the Whaling Museum might actually contain castor oil for all I know, but it's very existence captivated me and, in turn, led me to further investigate records of the Charles W. Morgan's final voyage (peruse the actual logbook from her last voyage here). The potential for an object to tell a story and inspire exploration and learning has long been a source of interest to me; indeed it was the impetus for my creation of the National Museum of Hospital and Pharmaceutical History, but alas, I digress...

My .50 cent pad of antique manila paper proved the perfect material on which to type up a label for my little bottle of "whale oil". The label reads, simply: "Oil from the last whale taken by the Charles W. Morgan, 05/21/1921". Serendipitously, the glass dome that had housed a display of dried weeds was perfectly suited to the protection and enhancement of my new artifact, and was made ready by merely removing the weeds and adding a flat disk of cork for the bottle to sit upon. The result:



Thank You for joining me, and happy autumnal days to you all!!!

The Gentle Art of Scrimshaw!

Greetings, FinderMakers! If you have followed me from the get-go, you may remember some earlier posts that reflected my interest in mammoth ivory and old piano key ivory and their use in scrimshaw. I am pleased to finally offer this third and final installation in my "Urban Scrimshaw" series: An easy-to-use tutorial that will have you scrimming like a salty old sea dog in no time! The image above is a scrimshawed whale tooth from the Nicholson Whaling Collection at the Providence Public Library, an excellent resource for inspirational images and information! The image below shows some old ivory piano keys I pulled from an abandoned piano.



Before we begin, I have two requests of you, kind reader: First, please do go back and read my earlier posts on mammoth ivory and piano key ivory, as the latter is the material of focus in this tutorial, and that earlier post will provide you with a solid pedestal of knowledge upon which your crafty new skills may be proudly installed. Second, please know that I myself am no "salty old sea dog" in the scrimshaw department; My scrimshaw schooner has only just sailed out of the port and I have plenty to learn as this journey unfolds! My own drawing skills are sorely lacking, and so I have adapted a solvent-transfer technique to the art of scrimshaw to aid in the process of creating a clear, recognizable image, so even if you can barely draw a smiley face, you'll still have a pretty good shot at making a beautiful piece of scrimshaw if you follow along with me!



Above are some of the items used for this project:
- an old ivory piano key (or other suitable material, like a piece of mammoth ivory)
- a pin secured in an x-acto knife holder
- some black ink
- acetone (nail polish remover)
- a little block of beeswax
You will also need a regular black and white photocopy of the image you want to etch onto your ivory.

To begin, I shall explain that the basic procedure for producing scrimshaw simply involves scratching an image into the surface of the ivory with a pin, then applying ink (or, in the olden days, "lamp black," soot collected from oil lamps), which soaks into the scratches and is wiped away from the unscratched surface. The first step in our process will be to seal the surface of our piano key, as it is somewhat porous and, if left unsealed, may soak up some of the black ink that we apply after the design has been scratched in, leaving an unwanted inky black cloud on the key that will be impossible to remove.



To seal the key, I place a buffing wheel on my dremel tool and start it spinning. Then I touch the spinning wheel to my little block of beeswax so that the wheel picks up a little wax. The wheel, now loaded with wax, is run all over the surface of the piano key so that the wax gets worked into it. Afterwards, you will see the hazy layer of beeswax on the surface of the key; just rub it with a clean cloth until the excess surface wax has been buffed off and the key looks nice and shiny. If you don't have a dremel tool, that's ok; just rub a little block of beeswax thoroughly over the surface of the key, making sure not to miss any spots. When you have built up a thin layer, buff the key with a clean cloth until it looks shiny... it is now all sealed and ready for the next step!

Now you will need to decide what image you would like to scratch into the surface of your key. I found one of those clip art books full of Victorian-era illustrations at the thrift store; it is a great source for appropriate images! When you find something you like, scale it down to fit on the piano key either on your computer (photoshop, etc.), or directly on a black and white photocopy machine. The solvent-transfer technique only works with standard black and white photocopies, so if you scale your images on the computer, you will need to print them out and then bring your printout to the copy shop and make a black and white photocopy of it. If you are using an image that involves text, the transfer technique applies a reversed image onto the surface of the piano key, so you will need to print out your image in reverse if you want it to show up correctly after it is transferred. Below is a section of my photocopy sheet with some appropriately scaled images; I chose to use a horse head with some leafy swags.



Next, trim your image out and decide where on the piano key you would like it to go:



Place the image face down on the surface of the piano key and moisten a cotton ball with nail polish remover. Holding the slip of paper firmly in place with one hand, dab the soaked cotton ball onto the back of the paper with your other hand. The acetone will free the photocopy ink from the paper surface, transferring it onto the ivory! Make sure the paper gets plenty damp with acetone (it will become translucent) and then, after a few seconds (but before the paper begins to dry) peel the paper away from the key-- your image will be transferred!





If it doesn't work perfectly, don't fret. Just wipe the image off of the piano key with your acetone-soaked cotton ball, reseal the surface with beeswax, and try again with a new photocopy image (you can't use them twice, so it's a good idea to print out several copies of the images you want to use!)



Now that we have a nice template transferred onto the piano key, we can start our scrimshaw! The dark parts of the transfer will be the dark parts of the competed scrimshaw and, as you will recall, the black ink soaks into the lines we have scratched into the ivory surface, so we can now start to scratch lines into the dark areas of the transfer. This is best accomplished with the tip of a pin or sewing needle that has been tightly screwed into an x-acto knife holder. I use wire cutters to nip about a 1/2 inch of the sharp tip off of a sewing needle, then place this in the x-acto holder with about 1/4 inch protruding, then screw the holder down so the needle tip can't move.



You will probably need to experiment with what type of lines end up looking the most appealing to you: shading can be accomplished by scratching in "crosshatched" lines, or by varying the distance between the lines that you scratch into the ivory surface. You might also like to try a fatter sewing needle versus a thinner one to vary the size of the lines. Sometimes a "stippling" technique is used: The needle tip is pushed into the ivory creating fields of tiny dots that comprise darker or lighter shaded areas depending on the number of dots applied. Detailed stippling can yield images that look nearly photographic! In the photo below, you can see that I have scratched away almost all of the black photocopy transfer image; it is now time to apply the black ink!





The ink is applied with a cotton swab that I dipped into the ink. Let the ink dry (only takes a minute) then wipe the dried ink off the ivory surface with a slightly damp paper towel; the dried ink will stay in the lines you scratched, and your image is now revealed! Now wet a piece of paper towel with a little acetone, and rub the surface lightly to remove any leftover bits of the photocopy ink.



Now go ahead and seal the surface with beeswax again just like you did in the beginning; this will seal in the ink so it wont bleed if you should get the ivory wet again. If you see some areas that need to be scratched more, then you can do so now, after you have sealed it the second time. Just add in some more scratches and repeat the inking and sealing process. You can keep doing this until you are pleased with the way your image looks!



If you don't have access to a black and white photocopier, you may achieve similar results in the following manner: Scale down your image to the appropriate size on the computer and print it out. Then draw over the dark areas in your image with a sharp pencil (I use a mechanical pencil). Next, place the image face down on your piano key and rub the back of the image with a spoon, bone folder, or similar hard, blunt object; this will transfer the pencil outline faintly onto the surface of your ivory! The picture below is a piano key with a scrimshawed sperm whale I did using the pencil transfer technique... it turned out nicely!



And a few more:





I based the Kachina drawing above on this actual Hopi carved cottonwood root Kachina, called "Ahote":



Thanks so much for joining me, and please do feel free to contact me if you need any clarification or additional info!



(please note: scrimshaw imagery and art, piano key scrimshaw, etc. property the artist, copyright Paul Baxendale 2009/2010)