“Scrimshaw, the art the whalers began, has continued.  There remains people for whom the plain surface of a tooth or tusk triggers something in the imagination whereby designs begin to form ghostlike on the ivory, where no design actually exists.  Twitching to materialize them there, the hand reaches for something with which to scratch.  It is the burden of the scrimshander, the primordial urge to decorate the bones of a worthy prey.”

(William Gilkerson ,The Scrimshander)