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We had a nautical Valentine’s.  My wife knows that nothing expresses love like the gift of weaponry. She got me this amazing scrimshawed knife. (Scrimshanded is the correct term but people look at me funny when I say that).  It was made by Linda Layden   I’ve always been fascinated by scrimshaw which is slightly dichotomous given that I love both whales and elephants.  This knife is bone but Layden also re-purposes old piano keys.  There are hundreds of thousands of junky old pianos out there but it raises a question. Does preserving ivory create a market demand for the stuff?  It’s been illegal to trade in ivory since 1975 and even the old stuff is in a legal grey area under the Lacey Act.  (To be honest, cutting apart an old rosewood china cabinet and making something new from the salvaged wood, even if it’s not for resale is now illegal under U.S. law too!)  

 I don’t use shell or ivory in any of my instruments but I’m often faced with the prospect of repairing stuff made from them. It’s a quandary. I’ll replace ivory with a synthetic substitute if need be but if something from the ‘teens has a perfectly good elephant ivory nut on it I’ll leave it. It seems disrespectful to throw ivory in the trash.