Standley’s Ye Olde Curiosity Shop in Seattle-a local landmark still in business on the waterfront at Pioneer Square. This cribbage board was spotted by George Heye in around 1915 at J. The flowering plant, on the other hand, may be a flight of fancy. The details of each scene suggest an artist thoroughly familiar with his surroundings and able to render them with great accuracy. This cribbage board is exquisitely engraved with images of two species of seals basking on ice floes, a harpoon, and a tiny image of what appears to be a Norton Sound style kayak. Cribbage boards made from walrus tusks and engraved with images of animals, hunters, and other scenes of everyday life became extremely popular and were eagerly purchased as mementos of an Arctic adventure. Native artists quickly adapted their traditional skills to meet the demand. It also has carvings of a canoe and seals on the side of the tusk opposite the cribbage game. But when gold was discovered on the beaches of Nome in 1898 and the town was engulfed by gold seekers-40,000 by 1900-a market developed for Alaskan souvenirs. What is the value of an ivory cribbage game scrimshawed on the tusk of an animal (possibly a seal) It is approximately 12 inches long and is circa the Alaskan gold rush. The Inupiaq Eskimo people of Alaska have been engraving realistic images on walrus ivory for a thousand years, most of that time on bow drills made for their own use.
