Sailors Scrimshaw ‘Friendship Fist’ Carved Whalebone and Sperm Whale Tooth Walking Cane
A Sailors Scrimshaw ‘Friendship Fist’ Carved Whalebone and Sperm Whale Tooth Walking Cane with Inlays of Baleen
Old yellow creamy patina
Mid 19th Century
Size: 92cm long - 36¼ ins long
Old yellow creamy patina
Mid 19th Century
Size: 92cm long - 36¼ ins long
Scrimshanders, both American and British, did not use the canes they produced on board ship, but gave them as keepsakes to sweethearts and relatives when they arrived home, or sold them to quay side traders when their ship returned to port. As the boat steerer of the whaler ‘Clifford Wayne’ of Fairhoven, Massachusetts, wrote in the ship’s logbook in 1844, ‘Nothing do we do but make canes to support our dignity with when we get home’.
Sailors Scrimshaw ‘Friendship Fist’ Carved Whalebone and Sperm Whale Tooth Walking Cane
SOLD
