Chaplets of ivory beads for private devotion were very common in the middle ages, and are often mentioned in letters and other documents. Some good examples still exist in various collections. The woodcut on the next page represents a set, and a girdle with ivory clasps, in the collection of M. Achille Jubinal.
CARVED IVORY CHAPLET OF BEADS AND GIRDLE OF AN ABBESS:
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Another class of small works in ivory was to be found in England from an early period, namely seals. Some have been preserved. One is in the Ashmolean at Oxford; oval, of the archdeaconry of Merioneth, in the thirteenth century; another, walrus ivory, of the abbey of St. Alban is in the British museum.
Robert Fabyan the chronicler, in his will dated 1511 leaves to one of his sons “that other signet of gold, with my puncheon of ivory and silver.”
There are several very fine horns in the South Kensington collection, more especially no. 7954, engraved in the accompanying woodcut, and which is unequalled by any other of its kind known. The style and workmanship are rare; one, probably by the same hand, was lately in the possession of a noble English family. The horns which we find frequently mentioned in mediæval wills and inventories are hunting horns. For example, Sir John de Foxle in 1378 leaves to the king his great bugle horn, ornamented with gold. “The ivory horn of St. Oswald the king” was preserved at Durham in the year 1383. Near the end of the thirteenth century there were two ivory horns kept in the treasury of St. Paul’s: “Item, cornu eburneum gravatum bestiis et avibus, magnum. Item, aliud cornu eburneum planum et parvum.”
A common term anciently in England for these horns was “olifant,” from the name then usually given to the elephant; for instance, the amusing story in the old life of St. Clement in Caxton’s Golden Legend: “When Barnabe came to Rome prechynge ye fayth of Jesu Christ, the philosophers mocked hym and despysed hys predicacyon and in scorne put to hym this questyon sayenge, What is ye cause ye culex whyche is a lytell beest hath vj. feet and two wynges and an olyphaunte whyche ys a grete beest hath but foure feete and no wynges,” etc. St. Barnabas replied that it was a foolish question and needed no answer—the more especially as they knew not the Creator and must necessarily, therefore, be ignorant about his creatures.