Beginnings

I'm Ed Weber and I make my home in the country outside of Nashville, Tennessee. But I was raised in Monee, a small town in Illinois. Music has always been a significant part of my life. I started out singing in the church choir and school chorus when I was eight years old. During my teen years my interests turned to songwriting and playing a stringed instrument. I took up the guitar first and later, the banjo, and formed the first of several bands that would see me well into my early 40’s - pursuits which continue to this day. The year I turned thirty though, was the year I first became acquainted with the art of Scrimshaw.

I learned about Scrimshaw in the summer of 1979 while employed at a railroad tank car lining shop. The company hired an outside firm, a track laying crew to re-ballast and lay new track in our switch yard. In their employ was a young man, a self-professed gypsy whose name was Alphonso. He preferred to be called Ringo because of the rings he carved out of deer antler. He had very strong hands and could easily carve out a ring in eight or nine hours. I was fascinated by his handiwork. We became friends and I asked him to teach me how to carve rings. The first one I carved easily took twice as long as his did to complete and of course looked nowhere near as good as his. Ringo brought up the subject of scrimshaw in a conversation one day and intrigued, I asked a lot of questions. Although I now know his knowledge of scrimshaw was somewhat limited his answers were the spark that set me on the road to becoming a scrimshaw artist.

I learned that scrimshanders scratched scenes onto the surface of polished bone or ivory but I decided to stick with Ringo’s example for a while, carving rings out of antler bone. I wanted to get this down before moving on to something new. A cross-section is cut out of the antler and slowly, tediously, reamed until the finished interior diameter is reached. The closer to the outer surface I got, the denser the material became and thus more difficult to work. I discovered very quickly just how hard on my hands carving bone was.

I carved objects such as eagles and hawks and frogs and geometric patterns on the outer surface of the antler. Later, I made earrings and necklace pendants by utilizing the antler tips. These were very simple beginnings but it was a start!

It wasn’t long before I decided to try my hand at scratching a scene onto a ring. Being self taught I was very timid at first but my courage grew over time as I began to learn the skills involved. Through conversations with other scrimshanders and comparing my work with theirs I knew I had come a long way and was on track. Since I had never taken any graphic design or fine arts courses during my school years those early beginnings were exercises in confidence building.

As I said before, the thrust of my passion was music; I felt compelled to devote the lion’s share of my time to that and nothing else. Learning to play an instrument and play it well takes a great deal of energy and time not to mention daily dedication. But meeting Ringo was a game changer for me and came at just the right moment in my life. By then I had developed a firm foundation in music and I felt I could now put it on cruise control and devote much more time to Scrimshaw.

I eventually switched to genuine ivory in the late 1990's. Up until then I worked on developing and honing my skills mostly on bone antler at first. Later I discovered other materials to work on such as Micarta, Corian, and Grained Ivoroid. Those materials left something to be desired. Micarta and Corian both are too brittle. The cuts into the surface tend to flake and chip. Grained Ivoroid is a little too soft and the cuts in this surface are like plowing a furrow in a field leaving a minute edge on either side of the cut that needs to be sanded down. It also has manufactured grain lines that distract the eye from the finished picture. Although these materials work well enough for most scrimshaw applications they simply cannot compare to genuine ivory when rendering portraits and scenes.

~ Ed Weber