Ivory is tough and strong. It glows like silk, it glows in rings, and it glows when held up to the light. It can be scraped to translucent thinness, but the machining processes of turning and carving push the material to its limits. If you go too far, it simply breaks.
From the late 16th to the early 18th century, though, the princes of Europe were obsessed with it. They, and their artisans, worked ivory to its limits, like the nested geometric solids in ivory shown here. One of these pieces was produced by Egidius Lobenigk, a court turner to the Electors of Saxony in the 1580s. Some of his works, more exuberant than the poised examples pictured, resemble something out of science fiction—they are deliberately warped and smeared, a form of early modern glitch art.
