bone carving

{{Short description|Art, tools, and goods carved from bone}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2022}}

File:Lilleberge Plaque (BM).JPG plaque from Lilleberge, Norway, 9th-century.{{cite web|url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=64560&partId=1&searchText=Plaque+whalebone&page=1|title=plaque / food-tray / culinary equipment / chopping-board|website=British Museum|access-date=26 April 2018|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303232120/http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=64560&partId=1&searchText=Plaque+whalebone&page=1|archive-date=3 March 2016}}]]

file:Alaska Grasendes Karibu c1910 Linden-Museum.jpg]]

Bone carving is creating art, tools, and other goods by carving animal bones, antlers, and horns. It can result in the ornamentation of a bone by engraving, painting or another technique, or the creation of a distinct formed object. Bone carving has been practiced by a variety of world cultures, sometimes as a cheaper, and recently a legal, substitute for ivory carving.{{cite journal |last1=Sims |first1=Margaret E. |last2=Baker |first2=Barry W. |last3=Hoesch |first3=Robert M. |title=Tusk or Bone? An Example of Ivory Substitute in the Wildlife Trade |journal=Ethnobiology Letters |date=2011 |volume=2 |pages=40–45 |doi=10.14237/ebl.2.2011.27 |jstor=26419931 |doi-access=free }} As a material it is inferior to ivory in terms of hardness, and so the fine detail that is possible, and lacks the "lustrous" surface of ivory. The interior of bones are softer and even less capable of a fine finish, so most uses are as thin plaques, rather than sculpture in the round.Osborne, 145 But it must always have been much easier to obtain in regions without populations of elephants, walrus or other sources of ivory.

It was important in prehistoric art, with notable figures like the Swimming Reindeer, made of antler, and many of the Venus figurines. The Anglo-Saxon Franks Casket is a whale bone casket imitating earlier ivory ones.Osborne, 145 Medieval bone caskets were made by the Embriachi workshop of north Italy ({{circa|1375}}–1425) and others, mostly using rows of thin plaques carved in relief.[https://www.artic.edu/artworks/107681/casket "Casket"], Art Institute of Chicago

File:Roman Bone Carving.jpg]]

Flat bones were also used by artists and craftsmen to try out their designs, especially by metalworkers. Such pieces are known as "trial-pieces".

In July 2021, scientists reported the discovery of a bone carving, one of the world's oldest works of art, made by Neanderthals about 51,000 years ago.{{cite news |last=Feehly |first=Conor |title=Beautiful Bone Carving From 51,000 Years Ago Is Changing Our View of Neanderthals |url=https://www.sciencealert.com/more-evidence-found-for-sophisticated-symbolic-behavior-in-neanderthals |date=6 July 2021 |work=ScienceAlert |accessdate=6 July 2021 }}{{cite journal |author=Leder, Dirk |display-authors=et al. |title=A 51,000-year-old engraved bone reveals Neanderthals' capacity for symbolic behaviour |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01487-z |date=5 July 2021 |journal=Nature Ecology & Evolution |volume=594 |issue=9 |pages=1273–1282 |doi=10.1038/s41559-021-01487-z |pmid=34226702 |bibcode=2021NatEE...5.1273L |s2cid=235746596 |accessdate=6 July 2021 }}

Both whalebone (baleen) and the normal skeletal whale bones were often carved, especially for scrimshaw and in the Middle Ages.