Ivory and ivory carving
Look at these beautiful ivory carvings. The craftsmanship of ivory was really something special in India. This material is, most commonly, understood as coming from elephants, or more specifically, from their elongated tusks.
It is made up of a fibrous, dense substance, composed of the pores of the dentine structure bound together by a gelatinous solution that keeps them still. This process appears in several other animals besides elephants: hippopotamuses, whales, walruses but also mammoths. This last example is striking, because the collecting of mammoth ivory actually traces back ivory carving to prehistoric times!
However, to be able to consistently “harvest” ivory, elephants have been tamed and domesticated. The diet of the domesticated elephant influenced the texture of its tusks. The ivory resulting from a bad diet was softer and therefore less valuable in commerce.
Ivory grows through layers, enlarging the tusks during the life of the animal. However not all elephants grow tusks, and the geographical distribution of elephants can result in differences in length, weight and texture. Therefore, not all ivory is the same: one type of quality might have served a royal, military function, while other types were considered appropriate for jewelry or just as simple adornments.
Indian craftsmen recognized two types of ivory: green and dead. The first one derives from a “freshly killed or recently dead animal”, while the other was usually recovered from carcasses or skeletons on the ground.
The gelatine is the main difference between them in terms of utility: the gelatine in green ivory is still fresh and oily, making the ivory flexible, while the gelatine in the dead ivory is not. This oily property of ivory was decisive in the preference it had over common bones that lacked the gelatinous component. This, in turn, made ivory even more precious.
By examining the ivory color, it's possible to deduce whether it comes from Asia or Africa. Asian ivory is usually whiter and more greenish than African ivory. This is a simplification: the subcategories in both continents are innumerable.
We are used to thinking about ivory in the context of modern ivory trading, especially in Africa, but how many other things there are to know, right?