Faux Ivory Inlay

The 14th Century (The One, True Century) was the ivory age.  Just about anything that could be made of ivory was.  If it wasn't made with ivory it was adorned with ivory.  There are a lot of fascinating political and economic insights to be drawn from this but that's not what I'm here for.  I'm going to talk about some of the difficulties this presents in recreating aspects of material culture and I'm going to talk about some ways to overcome this.

If you are a strict recreationist you need to stop reading now.  You see, all faux ivory is plastic.  There are exceptions, tagua nut makes a fine ivory alternative and so does bone.  Tagua nuts are small and really unsuitable for inlay or larger works.  Bone is the preferred alternative and was in the middle ages.  There are even laws prohibiting people from passing bone off as ivory.  So if you really want to be highly accurate in your portrayals/recreatons, bone is the way to go.

I have found bone to be difficult to work with.  The dust needs to be kept out of your eyes and lungs, the smell of it when cutting is unpleasant, and it's a fairly brittle material particularly when you cut it very thin as you need to do for inlay.  It's quite durable once it's inlaid, but getting it to that point... I lack the skill and patience.  Plus, bone comes in very narrow sheets.  If you want to make a larger piece you're going to have to join several sheets to make a large enough sheet to work with.  This is authentic.  And a pain in the ass.

Remember how I said that all faux-ivory products are plastic?  Yep.  You can buy very nice sheets of the material from many sources.  But it's plastic.  You can cast in ivory resins.  Again, plastic.  And you can use putties.  Plastic again.  But I find the putties are generally superior to all of the above because you can create the striations and imperfections of color found in real ivory rather than getting a uniform 'ivory white' plastic.  The trick is to look for the online tutorials on making faux ivory using Sculpey modeling clay.  You will find multiple approaches to this.

The technique I have used the most often involves inlay.  Simply put: I used a laser to make a channel in the piece of wood.  I then applied a thin bead of epoxy (super glue) within the channel.  Then I pushed my ivory colored sculpey clay into the channel.  I let the sculpey air dry hard then sanded the excess away.  I baked the piece in an oven at low heat to harden the sculpey and I oiled the piece with linseed oil straight out of the oven to avoid cracking/warping.

This produces a very nice faux-ivory inlay in small applications.  Here's a comb I made using this technique for the inlay.

You can see the inlay worked particularly well against the darkness of the walnut.  With care this process could be used for larger pieces such as tables boards (backgammon).  I don't think this would be suitable for items that stand alone.  The clay is significantly lighter than real ivory and lacks some of the feel.  It's also substantially less durable and prone to snapping.  This isn't an issue when it's inlay.