Basura: The story of Jasper and his ivory collection

“Because it happened to you doesn’t mean it’s interesting.” — Anonymous

(yeah, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t, either)

Years ago I had reason to visit an elderly man living in a suburb of Grand Rapids. I’ll call him Jasper. There was concern that Jasper could not live alone any more. I was a social worker then, and I was assigned the referral. I spent a large portion of an afternoon with the man.

He was not easy to visit because of the overpowering smell of urine in his home, and presumably on him. Science tells us that a persistent odor eventually no longer is sensed by an individual constantly exposed to it, and I think Jasper could exemplify that condition. I found it to be a very strong odor – and I’m known to have a very poor sense of smell. I ignored the smell as much as I could, though I addressed it briefly and said I’d like to have a public health nurse visit him. He was agreeable.  

Jasper was interesting. He presented himself as educated and refined. He was very effeminate. He was a lifelong bachelor. He was interested in the arts. Jasper would refer to what he called “the way I am.” I believed I understood what he was revealing, or at least hinting at, although it was never explicit. He had a brother that he said disapproved of him. His brother had followed a more traditional path.

Jasper collected antiques, and very much wanted to show them off to me. There were lots of china and porcelain pieces, and fine furniture, as well as art on the walls. He had a collection of small glass figurines, as described in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. He had a collection of ivory. This was a different time.

It was in the 1970s. Jasper had been collecting most of his adult life, and he was over 90 years of age. He had earned a good salary, and spent his money on travel and acquiring antiques. Jasper had beautiful glass fronted cabinets in which to display collections, none finer than the tall, four sided cabinet for his ivory. Each side had a door for access, and five shelves. It had a swivel in the base so that the cabinet could be rotated.

He took items from the ivory cabinet out, and handed them to me for inspection, while describing what he’d handed me. They were all antiques, and he would say where he’d gotten them, and when, and his informed opinion of the age of the piece.

“You can’t rely on what you’re being told when someone is offering an antique for sale. But there are some resource materials that can help.”  

Most of the items were from elephant ivory. Some were from walrus tusk, with scrimshaw. Most of elephant ivory pieces were large, slightly curved, hollow, and of a beautiful shade of white best described as – ivory. White with undertones of yellow.  There were two shapes. Some were tubes, most of which were about eight to ten inches long. The outside diameters were usually in the neighborhood of five or six inches. The other pieces were solid, much smaller, and cut from the ivory, as if a piece of tusk had been split lengthwise. Those shapes, maybe the size of a standard candle, would be carved on all sides, including what was the interior surface of the tusk.

The first ivory he showed me was a somewhat curved tube. The inside was unworked, but the outer surface was carved. It was unusual, in that it had been stained in a rich, medium brown. Perhaps treated with tea, he thought. It was covered with carvings of turtles. There were dozens of perfect bas relief carvings, as if the turtles were all on a log, basking in the sun. Turtles touched turtles; there was no negative space.

The edges of one turtle abutted the edge of another. That was the only piece where the color had been modified. It was incredibly beautiful. Even then, I understood that the likelihood was that an elephant had been killed for the ivory. Such a shameful practice was abhorrent to me then, as it is now. But it was, like the all pieces, incredibly beautiful.

Another piece was similar, in that it was completely carved, on the outside surface, but this one was unstained, and featured faces. The faces were very individual. There were men and women, boys and girls. Some were laughing, some were crying, some were beautiful, some were grotesque. One was of a young man that appeared to have Down Syndrome. The faces all appeared to be Asian. Jasper told me that it had come from China.

            There were five shelves on each of the four sides of the cabinet, and each shelf held many items. Another piece that he handed me was solid, about ten inches long, with a width of two inches or so and a depth of perhaps ¾th of an inch. It had a handle, carved with an ornate grip of about four inches. The grip had been carved so that it looked as if it was wrapped with coils of delicate rope. The remainder of the surface I was inspecting, as it lay across my palm, was carved with flowers and vines in a lovely design. Asked to guess the purpose, I was stumped. I was inclined to say letter opener. I knew though, that couldn’t be correct because, apart from the handle, it was smooth and blunt, and certainly wouldn’t have been useful in opening an envelope.

Maybe you should turn it over, he said. I did, and was astonished, perhaps shocked, to see intricate carving properly categorized as being explicitly pornographic. There were maidens cavorting with men, with animals, with mythical beasts.

“It’s called a Lady’s Comforting Stick,” he told me. “It’s very old, but isn’t it great? Can you imagine where it may have been? What stories it might tell?”

We talked some more about the purpose of my visit. His ambulation seemed sure, if slow. He was alert and oriented and rational. The evident bladder incontinence could be addressed by a public health nurse, and he was open to such a visit.

He guessed that his brother had referred him for assessment in part because his antiques were very valuable. He wondered if his brother was hoping to be put in charge. It was his inclination to donate the collections to museums, while he was still alive, or leave them to museums after he died. He had no doubt they would be prized.

And he said his brother had no appreciation whatsoever for his things, beyond monetary value. He thought his brother might have made the referral (which, of course, I did not address) out of some part of actual concern. But, he said, the valuable collections might have muddied the waters of altruism.

My assessment was that Jasper was mentally competent, and could make decisions for himself. I thought he got around his (very crowded) home satisfactorily. He was open to being visited by a public health nurse.

Then Jasper shocked me once again.

“I’d like you to have something from my collection. My brother doesn’t want it, and has no appreciation for nice things. You seemed to admire my ivory pieces. Please. Pick out one that you like, and take as a gift from me.”

I declined, of course.

The ivory trade has had horrific consequences for elephants. The slaughter is unsustainable, and usually the result of poaching. The huge, intelligent creatures are often killed by poachers for their tusks, with the bodies left to rot. Other sources of ivory include mammoth tusks (there are an estimated ten million mammoth remains in Siberia), hippopotami, walruses, wart hogs, and certain whales. Elk have two teeth valuable as ivory, thought to be remnants of tusks from many generations ago.

There is a hard, white nut commonly round in the coastal rainforests of Peru, Equator, and Columbia that is sometimes used as a replacement for ivory. Its small size limits its usability. It is called tagua, or vegetable ivory.

Manufacturers of products that once used ivory, including billiard balls and piano keys, have found suitable, and perhaps even superior, materials.

In 1979, the African elephant population was estimated to be around 1.3 million in 37 range states, but by 1989, only 600,000 remained.^[7][8] Although many ivory traders repeatedly claimed that the problem was habitat loss, it became glaringly clear that the threat was primarily the international ivory trade.^[6][7] Throughout this decade, around 75,000 African elephants were killed for the ivory trade annually, worth around 1 billion dollars. About 80% of this was estimated to come from illegally killed elephants.

Jasper remained in his home. He had a visit from a public health nurse. There wasn’t a lot to be done to reverse his medical issue, but there was a new approach to accommodate the problem, which provided significant improvement. He worked toward a decision as to whether to donate his collections to museums, or to start such distribution while he still living.

A properly executed will allowed for the distribution of things after his death, and he could also send away some items, to places of his choice. He remained in his home, with his treasures.