The who, the what, the where, and the why of color on recreating period scrimshaw work. What are you trying to replicate and what do you use to achieve that?
There are a lot of broad, sweeping claims and suppositions along with truths, half truths, and likely outright fallacies in the following wall of text. I am not an expert on the subject, these are things I've read or heard from people who I don't want to misquote so I won't mention them. So I am not in a position to debate any of this. Please correct me where I am wrong and add to the topic. Thank you.
Firstly, I believe this is an all of the above situation, they used whatever was available or what they preferred and the end result reflects a myriad of colors mainly on the black and brown scales? But, that is a big picture generalization. So if what they had access to changed whether they were on a naval or merchant vessel, or if they lived in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, in a bustling city of a million people or out in the hills somewhere, a trained scrimshaw artist/hornsmith or someone scratching away under a tree, would different colors be more prevalent in those individual instances?
The monkey wrench that you need to throw into any part in this thread is the argument (fact? I don't what to call it) many have that most if not all antique horns have been cleaned and re inked at least once. So how many people that try to recreate 18th century work are unbeknownst to them coloring their scrimshaw based on an addition from the 19th or early 20th century?
1. Pencil lead. Starting off with the easiest one to justify. It has been mentioned by some experts on the subject that pencil lead is often found in original scrimshaw. Historically widely available, easy to work with, and will color scrimshaw work. I think it's safe to say that lead is without question period correct based on the above, but how common was it?
Black vs Brown? This is the part that bugs me because I can't seem to get any sort of closure on the topic. I've seen work by and talked to some of the best scrimshaw artists and hornsmiths in the world. Some of them are adamant about brown scrimshaw and others black scrimshaw.
2. Black. Contemporary application is pretty simple. India ink, or black Sharpie, or magic marker, or a black dye bath. When you scrimshaw, you are cutting or scribing porous marks into an otherwise smooth surface, when you dunk it in the dye bath the color really absorbs into the scrimshaw marks and largely wipes off the smooth upper surface. Steel wool off the high spots. Most commercial steel wools have oil in them to prevent the wool from rusting on the shelves and it also makes it nicer to work with for most general garage type projects. For horn and gun work I use oil free steel wool, I
It's made by briwax. I don't want oil prohibiting a rusting process or interfering with a dye or stain.
Black scrimshaw? How period correct is it and for what period? I tend to see it a lot on naval work. I suspect it's because the medium is commonly ivory or bone and it's the best contrast to the bright white background? I think I see it a lot on high end period horns but almost exclusively through pictures and it's hard to tell sometimes and is that a later re ink?
3. Brown. I haven't experimented with brown scrimshaw yet so if anyone could fill in the details here it would be much appreciated. I suspect it's the same as black with the exception of using brown inks, markers, dyes? Something fun you can buy on Amazon is a set of 30 different colored sharpy markers that range from light tan to dark brown. Like 30 different shades of brown. So primitive and folksy horns are almost exclusively what I've handled as far as originals go and they have almost all had brown scrimshaw. I am hard pressed to think of anything that had black scrimshaw and the ones that have I feel like it just appeared black as it was on a darker part of the horn? I have heard things like it's the iron that oxidized in the ink giving it the brown color, that it was originally black? Is that true that something in the original ink oxidized or some other element broke down to create a black to brown color shift in the ink and over how long would this take to happen?
So not all powder horns were bought to be used, some of them were art pieces to display on a shelf. Honest hard use horns were commonly dyed, to what extent I couldn't say. It makes you not stand out in the woods and I imagine soom people just liked the way a dyed horn looked? They may have seen an in the white horn as incomplete like an undyed shirt? So it was common for horns to be walnut dyed.
I suspect that a significant portion of common scrimshaw work was colored as the result of a walnut dye bath people used to finish the horn and/or they carved something neat in the horn and crud would build up in the marks. Both of these things people try to replicate today using brown inks and dyes?
4. Polychrome. That's just a fancy way of saying many different colors. I know of people using fancy Windsor Newton dyes and magic markers. I think other people have used paints to achieve it but I don't know what kind? How common was polychrome? There was a big fraktur pennsylvania dutch style that was hugely popular so you should see polychrome originals all over the place, but I can't recall seeing one original anywhere?
