Sailors Narwhal Tusk Walking Cane

A Sailors Narwhal Tusk Walking Cane
Smooth old polished creamy yellow patina
Early 19th Century
Size: 84.5cm long – 33¼ ins long
Provenance: Ex English Private collection
See: Finch & Co catalogue no. 15, item no. 49, for another Sailors narwhal tusk cane
Lieutenant Edward Chappel of the Royal Navy stopped in 1814 at the Savage Islands in the Hudson Strait where he was shown arrows headed with ‘sea-unicorn’s horn’. The British Arctic explorer Sir Leopold McClintock in 1857 wrote that ‘most of the polar Inuit carried a spear formed out of the horn of a narwhal’. In a land where even a small piece of driftwood was rare and precious, narwhal tusks took the place of wood. The Inuit have hunted narwhals for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years and visiting sailors trading with them have taken the tusks on board ship and sometimes fashioned them into useful objects during the long voyage home.
NOTE: Now sold - similar walking canes / stick required for stock
CITES article 10 certificatesa re required for all antique narwhal walking canes, all applications for paperwork and costs are covered by Finch and Co on behalf of the client

Sailors Narwhal Tusk Walking Cane

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+44 (0)7768 236921
+44 (0)7836 684133

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ENQUIRIES

+44 (0)7768 236921
+44 (0)7836 684133

enquiries@finch-and-co.co.uk