Re: Ivory Replacement

[Ed Margerum <emargerum@mecn.mass.edu>]

One material which could replace ivory in many instrument applications
is camel bone.  Camel bone is purportedly the hardest and densest of
animal bones.  However, I have yet to find a source for camel bone.
Does anyone know of a source for this material.
 
Ed Margerum
 emargerum@mecn.mass.edu

>From owner-micat-l@NRM.SE  Sat May 13 12:37:28 1995
Message-ID:   <Pine.LNX.3.91.950513211915.5506A-100000@freeside.nrm.se>
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 21:28:06 +0200
Subject:      mainly ivory and its substitutes
From:         Jeremy Montagu <jmontagu@vax.ox.ac.uk>

A few points on ivory.
 
To Casey Burns, I don't think that there is a ban on fossil ivory;
certainly I have heard of Russian mammoth ivory travelling freely.
 
To Peter Rodwell, also, the above, but he is certainly wrong when he says
that 'Presumably this ban ... does not apply to, say, a musician
travelling ...'  It depends on the man at Customs.  Violinists have had
trouble because of ivory spots on their pegs, ivory nut, ivory mounts on
bows -- touring orchestras have had to grow very careful.  And there was
the horror story of the antique piano imported into America without the
right documentation that had all its keys stripped out and burned.  It is
not enough to say 'Sorry, I'll send it back' -- if it arrives without the
right licences and afidavits of antiquity etc, it can get destroyed.
 
To Ed Margerum, the Arab shuks in the Old City of Jerusalem are full of
shops selling bags made of camel leather (very attractive they are, too).
So there were in Egypt when I was last there in 1948, but I don't suppose
that's changed.  Where there is leather there must be bone.  Unfortunate-
ly, I've no idea of any contacts among abbatoirs or dealers.  Might be an
idea for a holiday, though, and see what you can find at the same time.
Plenty of very fine leather in Morocco, too, but I'm less sure whether
that is camel.  Do we have any members of this list in North Africa or the
Middle East?
 
To Cary and the members in general, now that the list has woken up, do
others feel as I do that a daily digest might be more useful than a
handful of separate messages?  And if so, does Cary have the time to do
this?  The Gamelan list changed in that way, and it does make handling the
mail much easier to have one message than to be confronted with a number
of them.  It seems to be easier on our mail system here in Oxford, too --
if you have too many messages, you start getting blinking warnings to
clear your box before a certain time or else...
 
Jeremy Montagu, Bate Collection, Oxford
 
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