By Rita Christopher, Courier Senior Correspondent:
What do elephants tusks and billiard balls have to do with the development of plastic? According to author John Frederick Walker, quite a lot.
Billiard balls used to be made from ivory and small imperfections in the manufacture or material could cause the balls to move erratically, ruining a perfect shot. Finding a material to make a perfect billiard ball, John says, was one stimulus to the development of plastic.
John will tell more fascinating stories about the history of ivory and the ivory trade when he speaks about his new book, Ivory’s Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate Elephants, at the Ivoryton Library on Sunday, Jan. 11 at 3 p.m.
John is no stranger to the building; he did some of his research at the Ivoryton Library, as well as at the Deep River Historical Society and the Connecticut River Museum.
Animals, John says, have been a lifelong interest.
“I’ve been fascinated by wildlife ever since I was a little boy,” he says.
He recalls that as a child his mother in Florida put up with his snake collection–as long as the reptiles didn’t come into the house.
The idea to do a book on ivory and elephants grew from an earlier book, A Certain Curve of Horn, that John had written in the search for an endangered African antelope. While doing the research, he was fascinated by elephants he saw in the wild.
“Who doesn’t love elephants?” he asks.
The most common form of ivory comes from elephants tusks, nothing more than the elongated incisor teeth of the animal. Ivory, however, can come from such other animals as the hippopotamus, the walrus, and the sperm whale.
According to John, ivory is an ideal material to work with because its cellular structure can be carved with very fine detail. It is neither too hard nor too soft for delicate workmanship.
Fascination with ivory, according to John, began long before the small towns along Connecticut River became the manufacturing center for ivory objects in America in the 19th century. At the height of ivory industry, which included the fabrication of everything from combs to piano keyboards, more than 90 percent of the ivory objects manufactured in the U.S. came from the Ivoryton area.
Ivory, according to John, has captured people’s imaginations for millennia. The earliest ivory art is the 35,000-year-old mammoth, tusk with an image of a mammoth incised into it. Cultures, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to modern day civilizations have prized objects made of ivory.
“It is really the white gold of history,” John says.
That history, he notes, has also included some unfortunate chapters. Often, ivory was associated with the slave trade. Sometimes the bearers who carried the tusks to the coast for shipment then became the human cargo of the very same vessels.
In the 20th century, according to John, modern weaponry–the legacy of civil strife in Africa–has led to wanton slaughter of elephants. By the l980s, he says, poachers were equipped with heavy-duty rifles like the AK-47. The killing so reduced the elephants’ numbers that the ivory trade is now regulated by international treaty. African countries, he says, can harvest the tusks of elephants that have died of natural causes and sell them under conditions stipulated by the existing agreement.
Still, John notes, the management of elephant populations in Africa today is a difficult business. An elephant, he notes, can eat some 400 to 500 pounds of foliage a day. That means, in areas where elephants exist in close proximity to cultivated areas, they imperil successful agriculture.
Moreover, there are also undeveloped areas of Africa, John says, where the elephant population outstrips the food resources. In Kruger National Park in South Africa, he explains, there are 12,000 elephants in an area that can ideally support only 8,000.
John’s expertise goes beyond wildlife; he has spent more than 20 years as a contributing editor at Food & Wine Magazine. In addition, he is an artist, using books as a basis for his mixed media creations,
When he was in Africa studying elephants, he says he always had a sketchpad with him.
“You really learn so much about an animal when you try to draw it,” he says.
His commitment to elephants goes beyond writing about them. He has also created the Ivory Project, which is designed to increase awareness of the issues involved in elephant conservation.
“There are no simple answers,” he says. “The care of elephant populations involves complex decisions. The question is one of finding the proper balance.”
John Frederick Walker, author of Ivory’s Ghosts, is at the Ivoryton Library on Main Street, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 3 p.m. Admission is free. Local historian Don Malcarne will also answer questions about the ivory trade.
Pictured: John Frederick Walker traveled to the far reaches of Angola
and back to Ivoryton and Deep River, researching his latest book,
Ivory’s Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate Elephants.
Photo courtesy of John Frederick Walker