Bay Harbour: January 24, 2024

Bay Harbour News Wednesday January 24 2024
16
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Etching away the hours: Nautical
• By Chris Barclay
JOHN F Kennedy brought a
seafaring tradition back from
the depths of obscurity before
his assassination, and now a Mt
Pleasant artist has perfected his
own depiction of a dying art.
Scrimshaw originated off
the United States of America’s
New England coast – President
Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts
– in the mid-1700s
by artistic whalers to break the
tedium of long voyages.
They whiled away untold
hours at sea by etching designs
– usually the vessel they crewed,
the girlfriend at home or a
mythical sea creature – on to
ivory teeth extracted from their
catch.
Scrimshanders, as they were
known, also decorated knives,
buttons and yarn winders by
using shark skin or pumice to
smooth the surface before a jack
knife or sail needle created an
outline.
Soot from the ship’s oven,
squid ink, tobacco juice or
gunpowder mixed with whale oil
then produced pigment to make
the design visible.
There is no open fire, or
pungent tobacco wafting in
Gus Milne’s workshop, yet the
72-year-old is still faithful to the
hobby he discovered by chance
four decades ago.
His creations are handmade
with a craft knife and a pin vice
before ink is applied. Sandpaper
is used to erase mistakes.
Milne, an avid model maker
since his teenage years, is also
self-taught.
There were no classes or
YouTube tutorials, and the
former workmate who turned
him to scrimshaw was solely a
collector.
“He wore an ivory pendant one
day and I thought I quite like the
idea of that,” Milne said.
He cut his teeth, so to speak,
on beef bone, which is hardly the
finished article.
“The trouble with beef bone is
you only get to ink it three times
and it bleeds into the bone. It
also has a grain and it tends to
grip the blade sometimes and
it will take you off in directions
SEAL OF APPROVAL: John F Kennedy reinvigorated
interest in scrimshaw during his presidency.
CRAFTSMAN: Gus Milne has been immersed in the nautical artform scrimshaw for more
than 40 years.
PHOTO: CHRIS BARCLAY
you don’t want to go.”
So Milne graduated to
scrimshaw’s base of choice,
ivory, a polarising product in
this day and age.
His website (www.
cressyscrimshaw.co.nz) details
how scrimshaw fits with The
Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species,
which New Zealand joined in
1989.
“I’m never going to do it on
elephant tusks,” he said.
Milne works with pre-ban
ivory and said although whaling
ended in New Zealand waters in
1964, there were thousands of
whale teeth in legitimate private
ownership.
To emphasise the point he
opens a case including ivory
mammoth tusks from the Arctic
Circle aged between 6000 to
‘God knows how many’ years.
Mammoth ivory is acceptable
because they are extinct rather
than an endangered species.
There are also walrus tusks
and ivory teeth from sperm
whales, last purchased through
domestic auctions and antique
stores five years ago.
Milne has whale ivory items
available but now uses it for
personal use.
Sale or commissioned items
are now assembled from the
keys of unwanted pianos, after
he noticed a bookmark of that
origin on Instagram 18 months
ago.
“This is more acceptable to my
‘This is more acceptable
to my way of thinking
because it’s old ivory piano
keys that are going to the
dump’ – Gus Milne
way of thinking because it’s old
ivory piano keys that are going to
the dump,” he explained.
His earliest piano keys were
played in London in 1876; he
recently acquired 200 from a
store clean out in Timaru.
Milne, who is unaware of any
other scrimshanders in New
Zealand, used piano ivory for
triptychs and has now branched
out to wider compositions.
He gauges the production
time in several weeks rather
than hours and estimates he
has produced 200 artworks –
including those from whale
and mammoth ivory – over his
career.
There are no plans to retire
though scrimshaw tests his
singular focus after he studies
paintings or photographs.
“You have to take breaks, you
tend not to blink so your eyes
dry out,” said Milne, who priced
his most valuable piece at
$3500.
Milne primarily illustrates
vessels of a bygone era and
panoramas of Antarctica – often
complemented by penguins and
orca whales – though he has also
reproduced the Wahine listing
on Barrett Reef in 1968.
An earlier shipwreck amid
New Zealand’s Subantarctic
Islands underlined a welcome
educational benefit to his
passion, as Milne researched the
loss of the British four-masted
steel barque Dundonald in
March, 1907.
Laden with wheat on a
journey from Sydney bound
for Cornwall in the UK, the
Dundonald slammed onto rocks
on Disappointment Island’s
west coast, 8km northwest of
Auckland Island.
KEYED IN: Precision and attention to detail is paramount
for a scrimshander.