I learnt to do scrimshaw from Deb Orvis, who kindly taught me one pennsic war—probably the one in 1984. Someday I'll have to photograph the first piece I made, along with the piece she gave as a gift: a real act of generosity, since in the normal course of things, you would expect an apprentice to give the teacher a gift, not the other way around!

Scrimshaw was a good match for me in that I loved doing pen and ink and working very small (my art teachers were always telling me to ‘draw bigger’.) However, Deb was not my only influence. At that time I was fairly deep into the con culture: it was at ConFusion, for example, that I met the man who would not only (re)introduce me to beads, by way of recommending for a job at Priya Imports; he also taught me how to knot (the sum total of my formal instruction for stringing beads—I'm otherwise self-taught); and he dragged me not only to gem shows, but also sf cons, pennsic events and the like.

Thus dealer's room and pennsic blankets were my earliest sales venues, and I was duly dismal at it. (But my record was slightly better than in the art room: I'm not sure I ever managed to sell anything that way;) However, I did get to hang out with lots of other sf and f artists and passionate craftspeople (the SCA is full of ’em;) and if my my original plan for supporting myself by doing fantasy and sf art after I got out of college was a total loss it was great fun, and I made many friends.^[1]

This piece was originally the focal for a triple strand necklace, subsequently taken apart. It's probably about 30x40mm. Lampblack ink on elephant ivory. Circa 1986.

One of those friends was was named Sandy Schreiber. Sandy made beautifully colored pen and ink drawings, and claimed the secret to her success was Dr Ph Martins inks. (which I didn't feel were colorfast enough, but they surely were saturated.) She used very clear hues, and managed to put whole rainbows of color in her work without it looking hopelessly gaudy, an effect I quite admired but couldn't duplicate.

And I absolutely adored the elaborately folded tails she put on her mer creatures. I love drawing folds, so that look I promptly swiped, as you see here. You'd think I'd have all the different kinds memorized, but in fact 25 years later,^[2] I still need to work from a model. Ah well. So much for my expertise.

I gave it to a friend who recently loaned it back long enough for me to photograph it, and put it on the site.) Oh, and I think this is the one whre the ivory broke: obviously I should have bezel set it to a holder with soldered rings, which at least would have had the potential to take the stress.

Photo 20090818; page created 19dec09; extensively rewritten 14jan10.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.