Last week we posted, “Vancouver Maritime Museum, Stephen Colbert & Whale Bone Porn,” about a controversy over an exhibit at the  Vancouver Maritime Museum, Tattoos & Scrimshaw: the Art of the Sailor.  One Vancouver mother and schoolteacher was offended by the erotic depictions on nine whale teeth which she described as “whale bone porn.”  It appears that the exhibit may greater problems than merely erotic scrimshaw.   James Delgado, director of maritime heritage for the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a former executive director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, says the teeth are not 19th-century scrimshaw.

‘It’s all fake’: Vancouver exhibit’s ‘whale bone porn’ is not 19th-century scrimshaw, former museum director says

I’m not a scrimshaw expert, but I had my suspicions, because I had never before seen or heard of scrimshaw depicting anything that could even be considered risqué,” said Mr. Delgado.

Mr. Delgado called in expert Stewart Frank, a Massachusetts-based curator and authority in the realm of fake scrimshaw.  Mr. Frank strode into the museum’s western Vancouver location, took a look at the specimens through a microscope and declared “it’s all a fake.”

The style was indeed too modern to have come from the 1800s, but the real “smoking gun” could be seen in the cracks of the antique ivory itself. The engravings, which had likely been done with a machine, were conducted over top of the existing cracks — indicating a recent engraving, even if the whale teeth themselves were authentic.

Mr. Frank even had a possible culprit; an unknown carver in the Los Angeles area that had been selling fake erotic scrimshaw since at least the 1970s. “He said it was likely the work of one person who unscrupulously took in this collector who wouldn’t know otherwise,” said Mr. Delgado.

Mr. Delgado is not the only expert skeptical of the nine teeth.  Maritime historian and novelist, Joan Druett noted that the images appear to be inspired by the work of Gauguin which puts them in the latter days of whaling.  She writes in her blog post, Fifty Shades of Scrimshaw:

This stunning set of whalebone teeth featuring art by the great French impressionist Gauguin deserves an exhibit all on its own. Judging by the provenance, it was part of a collection by the hugely popular writer and sport fisherman, Zane Grey, so there is a story there, too….

Scrimshaw has been popular ever since it was invented by whalemen, in imitation of Polynesian tattooing. One famous American whaling captain reminisced that he made more money ($25) out of the scrimshaw he sold after his first voyage than he made out of the voyage itself. Now, a good scrimshawed tooth can fetch thousands of dollars, so there is a brisk trade in fake scrimshaw.

Are those Gauguin teeth “fakeshaw?” There were still whalemen at sea in the early twentieth century, so it is possible that they are “real” … but it is equally possible that Zane Grey collected them simply because they are so beautiful.

Thanks to Judith Lund for passing along the news.