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| Meet Ivory Jack!
Everything has a story. Whether it’s woolly mammoth ivory sculptures and hand carved jewelry or sun masks, totem poles, or some Alaskan or NW Coastal art, the story behind the search, history and work to create the art form is precisely what Kurt Tripp, founder of Ivory Jack's Trading Company, finds most appealing about his business.
It also helps to have grown up in Alaska. That’s where Tripp got his start in the business of buying and selling Alaskan artwork thanks to a family history that spans three generations in the last great frontier of Alaska.
During the Great Depression, Tripp's grandfather sold everything he owned to buy a car with a rumble seat that could help him make the unbelievable drive from New York to Alaska. The journey took a long time over incredibly rough roads, but he finally arrived in Fairbanks where he became a riverboat captain. Besides hauling barges of freight for the U.S. government, his travels took him up several smaller rivers where he ran goods back and forth to the Eskimo villages. In exchange for the goods he delivered, the Eskimos gave him salmon and a variety of handcrafted artwork. By the time he stopped running the barge 35 years later, he had a tremendous collection of Eskimo artifacts, artwork, and other cultural items, including a large number of ivory carvings.
Family tradition continued when Kurt's father opened a store in Fairbanks where he worked with the ivory trade coming from the St. Lawrence Island Eskimos. Eventually, the family moved to Juneau where Kurt spent his summers working on the Alaskan Pipeline. After school, he worked on the Prudoe Bay oil pipeline for one year and saved enough money to start his own business in 1978, buying and selling scrimshaw art.
In fact, it was Tripp's search for fossil ivory to do more scrimshaw that led him into the Eskimo villages. That's where he began finding and buying ivory carvings, whalebone sculptures and other pieces of artwork which he then sold to clients in Alaska and the lower 48 states. Eventually, Tripp expanded into NW coastal art from Canada, selling totem poles and other items from those areas as well.
While Tripp now sells a large variety of unique items, part of his business focuses on selling fossilized Woolly Mammoth ivory jewelry. The jewelry is carved from the fossilized ivory tusks of Woolly Mammoths found buried in dense layers of ice in the Arctic wilderness. These massive tusks are unearthed many ways, although they are only found in three or four locations in Russia, Canada and Alaska.
Ivory Jack's skilled craftsmen work in Hong Kong, an internationally recognized center for ivory carving thanks to the painstaking techniques handed down over the centuries from generation to generation.
Besides selling mammoth ivory jewelry, Ivory Jack's also offers specimen type mammoth pieces such as well-preserved mammoth teeth and tusks are also available. To find out what’s available, please email ivoryjack@ivoryjacks.com.
Ivory Jack's also sells fossilized walrus tusk ivory specimens. Fossil walrus ivory is usually found in natural wash-ups such as on ocean or river beaches. Most of the ivory is found as artifacts that were carved or etched by Eskimos hundreds of years ago. Often times, the ivory will surface as ancient ax flints, skin scrapers, utensils and tools. These pieces are often used for scrimshaw or carved into other pieces of artwork. Ivory Jack's only buys fossil walrus ivory that has been removed from private land with the permission of the landowner and in accordance with all federal and state laws.
Searching for unique pieces of artwork, collectibles, and ivory is a job that gives Tripp the chance to travel throughout the year, one of the activities he loves most. Each trip brings with it an adventure most people can only dream or read about. One of Tripp's favorite tales is about the time he was invited to an Eskimo friend's house for dinner on St. Lawrence Island. That's when he had "twice-eaten" clams for the first time! Tripp quickly discovered that these were clams taken from the stomach of a walrus that was killed during a recent hunt. The clams were then served raw as an Eskimo delicacy, and thus considered "twice-eaten!"
While Tripp enjoys searching for unique pieces of artwork, he also enjoys traveling with his wife, Francine, owner of Northwest Heritage, and their three daughters, Courtney, Carli, and Hannah. Tripp is also a connoisseur of fine wines, and enjoys collecting original Alaskan paintings, artifacts, and other rare and wonderful treasures. |
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