New ivory trade ban
October 2 2015
Picture: Telegraph
The US and China have agreed a new 'almost total' ban on ivory trade. The bad news for lovers of portrait miniatures (which, since the early 18thC were painted on ivory) is that there is no concession for authenticated works of art like portrait miniatures. Here is the text of the US order banning the ivory trade - you can bring in an 18thC portrait miniature for an exhibition, but not for sale.
Whether preventing the sale of, say, a 1770s miniature by Richard Cosway will save any elephants remains to be seen.
Update - a reader has pointed me to this exemption for antiques. However, as far as portrait miniatures is concerned, the crucial paragraph of the regulations is this one:
The importer must provide documented evidence of species identification and age to demonstrate that the article qualifies as an ESA antique. This can include a qualified appraisal, documents that provide detailed provenance, and/or scientific testing. The Service considers this to be a high bar, particularly as it relates to the import of African elephant ivory (because the AECA moratorium prohibits the import of most African elephant ivory, including most antiques). Notarized statements or affidavits by the importer or a CITES pre-Convention certificate alone are not necessarily adequate proof that the article meets the ESA exception.
The 'high bar' referred to is a little vague, but in effect it means that you have to prove your portrait miniature on ivory is from an Indian elephant, not an African one. It so happens that Indian ivory was in fact the medium mostly used for portrait miniatures, but it's more or less impossible to scientifically prove that fact (with DNA testing) without destroying the miniature in question. And nor is it cost effective, when most miniatures are sold for less than £10,000. All the signs are, so far, that the US authorities are not goint to take a simple factual or art historical statement as proof that the ivory is of the exempt kind.
Update II - Dr Nicholas Welham, a Consultant Hydrometallurgical Engineer, writes:
There is apparently a non-destructive scientific method for determining whether ivory is African or Asian. A summary is presented in Paul Craddock's book "Scientific Investigation of Copies, Fakes and Forgeries" p.422 et seq, along with references to assorted learned publications which detail the methodology. The equipment (a Fourier Transform Laser Raman Spectroscope) is something most university chemistry departments will have.
I used one of these many years ago and the same instrument was being used by the conservation department at the National Gallery of Australia to examine paint pigments on assorted items in the collection (including Pollock's Blue Poles).
Providing the methodology holds up to closer scrutiny, then it shouldn't be too costly to distinguish between the two different elephant ivories.
Fascinating. Emails like this are one of the reasons I love doing this blog.
Update III - another reader writes:
I was interested to read your piece about the tightening of the trade in antique ivory. I also remember the ATG piece on ivory in April, about how supportive the art trade is of efforts to save the elephants, which contained an especially feeble quote from Marjorie Trusted of the V&A about how effective CITES has been in preventing the importation and sale of illicit African ivory. What bullsh*t.
I am a bit of a militant on this. The fact is, the mass slaughter of elephants is going on right now in sub-saharan Africa to the extent that perhaps no elephants will be around in a generation. For example, the elephant population of Ruaha in Tanzania has declined to *one third* of its size in 2013, so rapid and extreme has the slaughter been. In the 1970s, there were over 100,000 elephants in the Selous, now it is 13,000, and the rate of killing is escalating.
You make the point that banning 18th century ivory won’t help a single elephant alive today, and in a sense you are right. But how would you feel about banning artefacts made with antique human skin? After all, banning their sale won’t help the poor souls whose bodies were used. The reason we understand that the trade in such items is to be discouraged is because we can see that the circumstances of their production were highly reprehensible. It is that link - between the antique ivory artefact and the bloody elephant carcasses scattered in the grass - which has been severed & which a blanket ban aims to rejoin. The inherent ugliness of these objects has been laundered through time & through their generations of respectable owners.
Most historical African ivory was brought to the coast by slave labour (I can’t speak of Indian ivory). It’s a trade with a very unhappy history indeed. Banning all ivory sales isn’t about directly saving the lives of elephants alive now, it’s about getting people to recognise that ivory, then and now, has always been a deeply unpleasant trade tainted with cruelty. We humans face an uphill struggle to save elephants, and we have a better chance of success if we simply say that no ivory may be sold. In the great scheme of things, so what if a few dealers and auctioneers lose a few pennies on miniatures?
In the ATG piece, a dealer said “there is no correlation between a 17th century baroque ivory cup, and the illicit trade in poached tusks - none.” I see a close link, which goes like this: in the 17th century, people went to Africa and plundered it, killing elephants and taking their tusks. They took their ivory, used Africans as slaves to carry it to ships, and took it to Europe where it was turned into highly marketable artefacts. And now - guess what? - other people are going to Africa and are plundering it, killing elephants for their tusks. The very same thing is happening. You may feel it’s ridiculous to care about the murder of a seventeenth century elephant - and I partly agree. If elephants today weren’t being so threatened, it wouldn’t seem to matter - it would seem like a historical issue only, rather than a problem that began long in the past and which is still very much with us today.
