A whale of a time

President Kennedy was a collector but it remains a slightly arcane collectors’ hobby, with a select following of dedicated enthusiasts prepared to pay increasingly high prices for work by early 19th-century American whalemen-artists such as Edward Burdett and Frederick Myrick, both from Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.

They were followed later by such exponents as NS Finney, of Plymouth, Mass, the first professional scrimshander, and British brothers William and Edward Hill – but, unfortunately, very few signed their work, and the vast majority of these seafaring adventurers remain anonymous.

Burdett, active from 1824, was the earliest documented scrimshander but his work – and his life – was cut short when he was killed by a whale in 1833, aged 27.

Decent pieces are a comparative rarity on the UK market but an exceptional reminder of the folk artists’ skills surfaces at Tennants, in Leyburn, on July 22-23 in the form of a pair of scrimshawed walrus tusks estimated to fetch £4,000 to £6,000.

Originating from whaling station Port Clarence, in Alaska, one of the tusks is decorated with three sailing vessels – comprising HMS Illustrious, HMS Pilot and HMS Trincomalee – the latter being Britain’s oldest warship still afloat and restored over 10 years as a museum ship in Hartlepool. The tusks are being sold on behalf of a private vendor in the north of England, whose family have owned them for many generations.

Folk art is more popular in North America and prices for scrimshaw are correspondingly much higher, with the world record standing at $186,000 in Boston for a piece by Burdett which was found in the UK and exported.

The British best is £40,800 for a work by an unnamed artist who accompanied naturalist Charles Darwin on HMS Beagle in the 1830s. His engraving showed the Beagle being repaired after striking a reef off the Galapagos Islands.

Jon Baddeley, head of the collectors’ department at Bonhams, the leading international auction house for marine sales, says enthusiasts are fascinated by the romance and history aroused by imagining adventurous, fearless and money-hungry 19th-century sailors leaving Whitby, Nantucket, Dundee, Hull or London on voyages which took them around the tip of South America.

“Almost every part of a whale could be sold, except the teeth, so some of the more artistic sailors began to whittle away at them during the long months between catches,” he says. “

Those with the greatest skill had something lasting to give to their sweethearts or wives or to keep as a memento.”

Finally, a word of warning: collecting scrimshaw is a minefield, littered with resin replicas. Get an expert to check it really is marine ivory and also be aware that it is illegal to buy scrimshaw created after 1947. And by the way, an exponent of the art is a scrim-shander (not scrims-hander).