Scrimshander Gary Tonkin shares his passion and nearly 50 years of dedication to the rare art of scrimshawing

Gary Tonkin is perhaps one the last artists in the world who has mastered the fine art of scrimshawing. The act of carving elaborate scenes into hard-to-come-by ivory is an art almost lost to the world as it continues to move away from the ivory trade and practices like whaling. The 4.1 metre-long sperm whale jaw bone currently on display in a permanent exhibit at Albany Whaling Museum is a culmination of Mr Tonkin’s dedication and his life for the past 30 years. Born in Portland, Victoria, in 1949, Mr Tonkin grew up around a culture of whaling before moving to Albany in 1971 and worked for the Federal Government as an export meat inspector. Also with a strong whaling industry and culture, Albany once had an active whaling station with three vessels. As a permanent export meat inspector, Mr Tonkin had access to the leftovers of the whales, buying as many as he could afford, including their teeth and bones. “I had to work to raise funds to buy the teeth while the whaling station was operating,” he said. “They were very expensive. “And I knew that this part-time job had to back me up for that because the raw material was a finite resource, a limited resource, and I wanted to do scrimshawing for the rest of my life.” The sperm whale jaw bone is one of the few exceptions to the rule; it was given to Mr Tonkin from pilot John Bell, famous for his rescue of Ches Stubbs in 1964 after his leg was torn off after getting tangled in a harpoon rope. The jaw bone sat in Mr Bell’s shed after he supervised the removal ensuring the bone wasn’t cut. “I went and asked John if he was interested in letting the jaw go, and he wasn’t, but then years later he asked, ‘Do you still want that jaw bone?’ And that’s how I came into possession of it,” he said. Mr Tonkin’s scrimshawing art sets him apart from early and traditional scrimshanders, which usually depicting scenes including sirens and ships and are inspired the ocean. Instead, Mr Tonkin draws biblical and historical inspiration when carving the intricate lines that make up the detailed scenes of whaling expeditions and ship sinkings. The sperm whale jaw bone itself depicts sinking of the American whaling ship Kathleen in 1901. The ship was struck by a sperm whale on September 28, 1901, the escape of the crew and the sinking ornately carved out and frozen in time. Often helped by his son Sam, Mr Tonkin would often reposition the jaw bone around his studio to get a better idea of the dimensions of the bone and just how exactly he was going to place and etch the artwork. “All the time, I was working on a concept of where it was going with the subject material, and the composition,” he said. “I had to get the thread of the image to mesh, about the story line. “ It would take all different angles, lighting, and countless drafts to come to the final image. “I went through plenty of drafts, I had to stand a long way back from the jaw to get the idea as if another person was viewing it and how they would see it through their perspective,” he said. “I had to take into account the curvatures and how they would look at different angles and at different distances, a lot of thought went into it to make it look fluid instead of flat. “The part that sticks out to me is the stern of the ship as it’s keeling over and sinking, and the focus on the whaleboat and its escape in the wild seas. “The oars in the other vessel behind it are all to work like an arrow at the neck of the bend in the jaw, which send you along the aisle to the other components.” Scrimshawing is among other works Mr Tonkin has dedicated his life to, contributing to American and British whaling history by way of art commissions. “Scrimshaw has been a big part of my life, I’ve been doing it since I was 25, and now I’m almost 74,” he said. “It’s hard to visualise something in an exhibition that I’ve messed around in a home studio for so many years. It’s quite an honour.”