Sustainability and a Scrimshaw Pastry Crimper

In my search for unique vintage kitchen tools, I got this fantastic scrimshaw pastry crimper (I actually bought it from a collector friend of mine).  I secretly have a crush on this little sailor.  He is so handsome and fine-featured.  And even though I'm sure that it is perfectly functional as a tool (though I haven't actually crimped any pastry with it), to me it is much more valuable as a piece of art.  I haven't had it evaluated for authenticity, age or it's provenance (hello Antiques Roadshow!), but the basic web only research I've done about it has gotten me thinking about the (possible) history of this specific artifact, the tools we use to make food, and how this object's history relates to what's going on in the food industry right now.

Scrimshaw is the folk art and craft of carving objects out of or etching drawings into the various byproducts of the whaling industry, including teeth (whale and walrus) and bone.   Scrimshaw was originally practiced by sailors on long whaling voyages - some of which lasted for years.  It was the "pastime of lonely and often dispirited seamen far from home".  The most common forms of scrimshaw were nautical scenes etched into whale teeth (JFK was apparently a big collector of this type of scrimshaw), but scrimshanders (makers of scrimshaw) also carved many useful and decorative objects such as napkin rings, bodkins, canes, toys, spoons and pastry crimpers (also often referred to as jagging wheels) and other kitchen implements.  I think that the crimper I have is made from whale ivory, partly carved, partly constructed from carved pieces.  I'd like to think that my sailor pastry crimper, if authentic, was made by a bored and homesick sailor as a gift for his wife back home in Massachusetts, who used it to make beautiful fruit pies.

From the early 18th through the mid 19th century, the American whaling industry grew to be one of the preeminent industries in the country.  At it's peak, reached in the mid 1800's, there were 736 whaling vessels registered under the American flag in the 'Yankee' fleet alone.  Hundreds of whaling voyages each year brought back hundreds of thousands of gallons of whale oil derived from whale blubber.  Whale oil was used as lamp oil, in lighthouses, to light city streets and to make candles.   Sperm whale oil, oil derived from the waxy substance "spermaceti" found in the head of sperm whales was even more valuable and useful because it burned much cleaner and had a wider range of uses including soap, cosmetics, pharmaceutical compounds and specialized machine lubricants. 

Other whale byproducts including teeth (ivory), bones, ambergris (a flammable and waxy substance found in sperm whale digestive tracts) and whale baleen, (flexible but sturdy keratin plates baleen whales use for feeding - the 'plastic of the 1800's') were harvested and used to create multiple different products including tools, mens collar stays, women's corsets, toys and utensils.  Scrimshaw pieces were also traded and bartered in ports of call around the globe.

Most species of whales are now either considered endangered or vulnerable due to this history of commercial whaling. Whaling continued in various forms through into the 20th century when the International Whaling Commission was set up in 1946 to "provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus "make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry," but their success and influence is debatable. Greenpeace regularly documents Japanese whaling boats that are purportedly catching whales for 'scientific' purposes.

But contrary to my previous understanding, it wasn't really the decimation of the whale populations that ended the use of whale oil as a light source, but the discovery of petroleum that ended large scale commercial whaling in the US.   Ironically, sperm whale oil was used to lubricate specialized machinery thus enabling the beginning of the industrial revolution that would eventually require the cheaper and more abundant source of petroleum energy to power it. 

Before the industrial revolution, most tools and artifacts people used were created from an existing thing that (often) used to be alive.  Wood, stone, bone, and plant materials were reconfigured into simple and functional tools or works of art.  With the exception of metal, alchemy or chemistry weren't used as modes of production.  With the industrial revolution, commerce changed and the world economy moved from a hand-made craft person based system of manufacture to a machine made, factory based manufacturing system that we still live with today.  Production changed further when scientists and researchers developed new materials based on chemistry and a broader understanding of how elements could be re-configured into new products and materials that had never existed before. 

We now live in a world where most everyone is many degrees removed from the means of production - the 'things used by human laborers to create products' We often have no real understanding of the stuff we are surrounded by, where it comes from, how it was made and where it goes when we're done with it.  We now don't necessarily need to over-exploit our natural resources because we can invent replacement materials and use those instead.  This is inevitable and it is progress.  Without it I woudn't be writing this blog right now, sharing the post with hundreds of people I don't know and I, and many other  people wouldn't have jobs.   But within my lifetime, this same transformation from natural to manufactured has happened within the food system.  You go to the grocery store, you pick up a jar or a can or a package, and half of the stuff on the ingredients label you can't pronounce, you have no idea what they are, where they came from or what they do.

I'm not advocating or arguing that all humankind should or can return to an agrarian, pastoral ideal where we make all of our own things, grow our own food and live off the land.  And I'm not advocating returning to the time when we made everything from totally natural resources, thus decimating them.   I started writing this blog post before I went and saw Food, Inc. last night. Seeing it really drove the point home for me:  the industrialization of food has happened already and it is bad.  It's unhealthy for us, it's bad for the planet, it's bad for people working in it and we really don't know what the long term consequences are.  There has to be a way to create a sustainable food system that uses the advances of science, but not the exploitative industrial methodologies so inherent in a mechanized, capitalist system. 

If anyone knows anything more about scrimshaw in general, or this piece in particular, please get in touch and let me know.  Maybe I'm totally wrong and it was made by a 10 year old in Vietnam in 1995.  If so, chalk this one up as one of my crazy sustainability rants and leave it at that.

Comments

[mary streeter]

Hi there, I have one of these little guys too. Bought him from an antique dealer in Southern New Hampshire a few years back for $125. Since then I've researched until 'blue in the face'........had it checked out at the New Bedford Whaling Museum......at their advice had it x-rayed by my dentist (results inconclusive)........and appraised by a local dealer of note......$250 to $300, as I recall.

Conclusions seem to indicate that it was made, rather well, around the turn of the century and is most likely bone. I am pleased to have finally found another like it. I, too, love this little fellow and really don't care to part with him.

If you ever find anything more about him I'd be interested. I'll keep your blog bookmarked. mbs