Ivorine is a material made from the dust made when carving legally obtained ivory, Mammoth ivory, tusks, and teeth, which is then mixed with a clear resin and compressed as it hardens. This was one of the many solutions to the demand of the tourist market trade for Netsuke carvings after trade in new ivory became illegal. Once hard and dry, ivorine can be carved in exactly the same way as ivory. Though often deceptively sold to the modern tourist trade as elephant ivory, items made from ivorine have none of the striations common to animal ivory, though sometimes the carving is artificially aged to have the yellowed appearance common to true old ivory carvings.

Ivorine, to a miniaturist, is a plastic sheet, 0.5mm thick, translucent white in color with a matte finish on both surfaces. It is normally supplied in sheets 7-3/4 x 5-1/4 inches under this name. To date it has not been possible to determine if this was ever registered as a trade name. It could even be that the name has some horticultural origins, as there is a variety of the hardy herbaceous bush Aconitum or Monkshood which is known as Ivorine because of its ivory-white flowers. In the general world of miniatures, it is a name that has been accepted to describe the sheet material upon which some miniaturists paint their pictures, whereas in America it seems to be also used, sometimes spelled Ivorene, to describe any product made from Celluloid. The chemical name for it is Cellulose Nitrate; it is also widely known as Celluloid. It has been given a number of trade names by those factories that produced it, the best known of which is Xylonite. Generally regarded to be the first thermoplastic, it was first created as Parkesine in 1856 and as Xylonite in 1869 before being registered as Celluloid in 1870.

Historical Notes

Cellulose Nitrate was first accidentally discovered by a Swiss/German chemist in 1845 who, having spilt some acid (nitric or sulphuric), wiped it up with his wife’s apron, which we assume was cotton. He then put it near a fire to dry and found that when it got to a certain temperature it burst into flames and was consumed in seconds. This information eventually came to the notice of Michael Parkes, an English inventor, who investigated this and found that by mixing cellulose (obtained from cotton or wood pulp) with nitric or sulphuric acid and other ingredients such as vegetable oils and organic solvents, he could produce a dough which could be molded with gentle heat and pressure into a variety of objects. He called this material Parkesine. This was the first semi-synthetic thermoplastic raw material. Parkes was not a very successful businessman and in 1869 he signed over his patent rights to The Xylonite Company which was originally sited in Homerton in East London. But as the London suburbs became more densely populated, and as the production process was hazardous with a real risk of explosions, the main production plant was moved to Brantham near Manningtree on the Essex/Suffolk border on the river Stour. This was convenient as the dangerous chemicals required could be transported and delivered by sailing barge (today there is still a Thames barge called Xylonite which frequently sails and wins barge sailing contests). The less hazardous conversion from raw material to finished product was carried out at Hale End (now Highams Park) on the edge of Epping Forest. Over the years the company changed its name to The British Xylonite Company Ltd., then BX Plastics Ltd., and finally the company was taken over by Wardle Storey plc., who ceased the production of Xylonite in 1994. The Ivorine that is available today is made in Italy.

As Cellulose Nitrate was the first moldable thermoplastic available to industry, it was used for the manufacture of numerous products. It became more popular when it was found that the addition of camphor made it more flexible and less brittle. Amongst the many applications for which this material was used were brush backs, cutlery handles, combs, collars and cuffs, toothbrush handles, buttons, dice, spectacle frames, umbrella handles, early dental plates, billiard balls. (It has been reported that in Victorian times 12000 elephants, ideally females who had smaller tusks of higher quality, were slaughtered to satisfy the needs of the UK only for billiard balls.)