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The Artistry of China’s Ivory Puzzle Balls
- zackkatz 7y agoReally beautiful pieces. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t give any details as to their creation. Just check out the pictures.
- bshep 7y agoQuote from the article: The region’s method is detailed in an 1876 publication by the Scottish photographer John Thompson, who traveled extensively around China. According to him, an artist first used a lathe to rotate a block of ivory, shaping it into a sphere. They then drilled evenly distributed conical holes towards the ball’s center. Accessing the interior with an L-shaped tool, they would carve grooves to form concentric gaps, creating layers. “Hole after hole is in like manner centered,” Thompson wrote, “until all the grooves are cut, and meeting each other, the innermost ball falls into the center of the sphere. This inner ball is then moved about and carved with long tools passed through the holes, after which the bent chisel is again brought into play to cut out the next ball.”
- bitcurious 7y ago"This traditional art from Guangzhou can never be produced legally again." Weird tagline, both crass and wrong. There are legal sources of ivory, mainly antiques and mammoth tusks.
- reaperducer 7y agoDuring America's Civil War, solders made similar pieces of art from bones, wood, or whatever was at hand. Some of the simpler items I've seen in museums were linked chains made from a single bone. The more detailed ones were round balls carved inside of square cages. To be sure, they were nowhere as advanced as these Chinese artworks. But then, the soldiers were just using whatever was laying around, and were also busy fighting a war.
- fredophile 7y agoSeveral people on here seem concerned about this no longer happening due to restrictions on ivory. You can still get these in other materials like stone. I have one that is "jade" (more likely some random cheap green rock) that I bought in Hong Kong about a decade ago.
- paulsutter 7y agoCan never be produced legally again? What about synthetic ivory? https://www.nature.com/articles/507040a https://www.nature.com/articles/507040a > Synthetic ivory can now be crafted to the same diagnostic standards as genuine ivory (see M. E. Sims et al. Ethnobiol. Lett. 2, 40–44; 2011), and its price in China is only about 14% of that of real ivory
- anonu 7y agoThe presentation linked in the article has some awesome images of the individual spheres: https://www.cwi.nl/events/cwi-scientific-meetings-1/cwiscientific.pdf https://www.cwi.nl/events/cwi-scientific-meetings-1/cwiscien...
- Isamu 7y agoVERY interesting presentation of details on how the nested spheres were carved, with some surprising results, e.g.: layers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are clearly visible layers 6, 7, 8 and 9 are carved ‘blindly’