Although nobody know how many woolly mammoths were extinct in ten thousand years ago, large tusk weight over 50 kg are still rare in today market. Large mammoth ivory tusks with state of art carving are valuable in the market. Different kinds of design and carving theme can be find with the big mammoth tusks.
The two big themes of large mammoth tusk is animal and people. For animal tusks, the most popular theme are Chinese 12 zodiac animal, animal in forest, dragon tusk, Ocean Aquarium tusk etc.
For
people tusks, the ideas usually come from Chinese myths such as “Eight Immortals Cross the Sea”, “18 Lohan”, “Chinese Buddha and Kwun Yin”
etc. Sometimes, the artisans capture the of daily life of Chinese people from
the “Tong” to “Ching” period, the content reveals the lifestyle of all stratum
of the society (from rich to poor) as well as different economic activities in
rural area and the city.
For
carving one large tusk, usually needs 6 – 9 months to finish. First of all, the
artisan have to make a simple wood stand to hold the large tusk for him to
carve. Then the artisan have to sand and clean up the surface of the tusk
before carving.
Then the
artisan has to design what theme to be carved on the tusk. The idea usually
based on the shape and the size of the tusk. Sometimes, the artisan may need to
read some books and pictures to get some new idea for their tusk carving
project. After several brainstorming, the preliminary idea is developed. The
artisan would use the pencil to sketch out the full pictures of the tusk. If
everything is already, he will start carving by using the handcrafted machine.
Normally, it will takes 2 - 3 months to finish the first carving the whole
tusks.
The
following links are the videos showing the the steps of carving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-BgB7ClKo0
After
the first carving, you can only see what content are carved in the tusk but no
detail. At that time, the artisan has to carve the detail of each content on
the tusks. If the tusk is people scenery theme tusk, the artisan has to carve
the face, the hair and also the clothes of each people. While the house,
village, bridge as well as the trees are also need to be engraved in detail at
this stage. For one large tusk, there are over 60 people carved inside.
Therefore, this step normally needs 1 – 2 months to finish.
Some
parts such as the hair, the clothes and trees etc are need to be colored after
carving step is finished. Our painting artisans will use suitable paint to make
the tusk look more beautiful. After painting, the whole tusk needs to be
polished.
The
artisan who is responsible for wood stand making will design and measure the
size of the tusk in order to make a fit wood stand for this tusk. The design of
the wood stand is based on the theme of the tusk. For example, the artisan
would make a cloudy sky theme wood stand for matching the dragon tusk. It looks
like the dragon is flying on the sky. Therefore, wood stands also play an
important role in each large tusk carving. Normally, one nice and detail wood
stand needs about about 1 – 2 months to finish a nice wood stand.
After
finish the wood stand as well as finish polishing the tusk large, the chief
artisan will check each part of the tusk carefully to make sure every content
is well done without any mistake. If everything is already, this large tusk is
finished and ready to ship to our showroom in Hong Kong.
This
tusk #37544 is one of the master piece in our collection. http://www.tide-mammoth.com/product.php?id_product=3309
The size
of this tusk is rare large, size: 111" x 63"x 5.75" (278cm x 158cm x
14.5cm). In this tusk, there are many Chinese Fairies, 8
Immortals, kids, Chinese beauty carved in the tusk. They are doing different
things, some of them are talking with some others, some are playing and some
are playing music etc. You can see the carving
of this tusk is very detail and wonderful workmanship.
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