About ivory sources

[totorlekiller]

The other day, Arne (Polarbeard) mentioned something about Swedish razors that got me thinking.
He said that Swedish maker favored function over look and thus the style of their razors are very minimalist.

However, my experience hunting for blades tells me that the razors from Eskilstuna seem to be the one most commonly scaled in ivory. Ivory is very rare on French and German razors. It is found on some high end British ones, but comparatively it is pretty common on Swedish ones.

Ivory scales are functional in the fact that they are much slimmer that other material, but I am not sure that would explain.

Another potential explanation might be that Sweden could have had a large domestic supply.
That seem laughable, but the Russians were the second largest producer of ivory (after Kenya I think). When we think about mammoth ivory, we think about the really old petrified one, but some sort of woolly elephant still lived in the artic circle until pretty recently. Long dead yes, but teeth last long, especially when frozen in the tundra.

Plus there is also the non-elephant ivory. Whale hunting was a very popular thing in the North until very recently.

Any insight?

 

[Pierauspitz]

Well...
If I may add my 2 cents to the debate:

-on a material point of view, function over form might be a good reason for ivory, as it's dimensionaly much more stable than, let's say, horn (common on french razors f.e.). Bone? meh...
-To this I could also answer what my experience showed me. Living in a neighbouring country (Finland), a lot of the razors available in antique shops or flea markets are indeed Swedish. None, and i say NONE, I've seen so far had ivory handle, same for bone. Celluloid and of course horn, being by far the most common material.
Same remark on Swedish sell websites (albeit, I've seen one or two ivory ones).

This leads to an other conclusion: the laws of the market. Most countries produced very serviceable "simple" razors. It was probably unprofitable for an American, British or French person of the late XIXth, early XXth century to bother importing a "standard" Swedish razor. What was available domestically was way enough. So if you ordered one, it meant you A: wanted something special, B: had the means to pay for that something special, hence ivory.
An other point is that being a precious object, it would be cared for, and passed down as heirloom, therefore more likely to end up in good shape 150 years later, and so available for actual people.

As for mammoth Ivory: let's not forget the situation of the XIXth century: it was much easier to get to notch african ivory than go on a risky expedition in the depth of Siberia to gather what will be an inferior product. (the most recent mammoth died out in Wrangler Island around 3500 years ago... Still quite a long time). As for walrus and narwal ivory, wrong century, that trade was killed off in the 15th century by the availability of "cheap" elephant ivory.

 

[Polarbeard]

The answer is simple; the main competition for the Swedish export was Solingen and there was no way for the Swedish manufacturers to compete with the grandeur of some of these razors hence the ivory to add luxury in the simplest possible way without having to change the blades. The thinness of the ivory is more due to a need to keep the material consumption to a minimum than anything else. All ivory was imported elephant ivory.