Tusk - Family Prehistory

When Mum passed, some of the jewelry she had from her mother came into our household for Audrey and the girls, with other pieces going to Tara.

Audrey is often good at guessing what such things are made of, but a necklace and a set of earrings left her baffled. It didn't look like any sort of stone but didn't resemble any bone or horn she had seen either. 

Since she had business with them anyways, she brought the pieces with her to Fine-Line Jewellers on 124th street. They have done a ton of repairs for us and for Audrey's parents as well, and have a real wealth of experience in their family-owned business.

When Audrey returned to pick up the 100-year-old clock her parents were having repaired, Kim told her that she was right, after a fashion; the pieces were not made from bone, but from mammoth tusk.

Mum's Aunt Ruby lived in Alaska and Nan had visited there a few times as I recall, coming back with a number of carvings that at one time we had feared might be ivory. As it was explained to us, Indigenous peoples in Alaska are actually given a dispensation to harvest, work with and sell this ancient ivory, but there are still restrictions on where it can be sold.

In Siberia, Russian tusk-hunters race out every spring to find mammoth skeletons and tusks left exposed by the dwindling permafrost, often selling them directly to buyers from China. 

To the best of my knowledge, Nan's pieces came from small markets in Alaska, sometimes directly from the carver. She added them to her collections of crystal sculptures and unique pieces of jewelry.

It's fascinating to look at something so small and dainty and realize it came from the tusk of one of the largest land mammals of all time (although not the largest!) and which died out after the Pleistocene, over a quarter-million years ago. And that's to say nothing of the craftsmanship of the carving itself.

Family jewelry should always have a tie to the past, whether through legacy or nostalgia, but a connection to prehistory makes these pieces especially significant to our history-loving household.