Siberia — Mammoth Ivory Carving, One Thought Between

The last woolly mammoths died approximately 4,000 years ago on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia.

Mammoth ivory is not elephant ivory. It is fossil material — tusk that has spent between 10,000 and 40,000 years in permafrost, slowly mineralising. The cold preserved it. The colour it develops — ranging from cream-white to deep caramel, sometimes with blue-grey mineral staining — comes from the specific chemistry of the ground it lay in. No two pieces are the same colour. The material is legal to trade internationally; it comes from animals that died before human civilisation began.

Siberia holds the largest deposits of mammoth remains on earth. As permafrost thaws — increasingly rapidly — tusks, bones, and teeth emerge from the ground that have been frozen since the Pleistocene. The carvers who work this material are working with something that has no replacement and no future supply. Every piece is the last of something.

This carving depicts a figure caught between two states — the Chinese title Yi Nian Zhi Jian means "in the space of one thought," the Buddhist concept of the moment before a decision becomes irreversible. The natural skin of the tusk is preserved on one side, showing the original surface of the ivory before it entered the ground. The laughing face appears where the carver found it in the material — not placed, but discovered.

Origin: Siberia, Russia · Pleistocene epoch
Material: Fossil mammoth ivory with natural skin
Type: Carved collectible

One piece only. What you see is what ships.