Article ID: CBB547758541

Elephant under Glass: The Piano Key Bleach House of Deep River, Connecticut (1993)

unapi

The industrial fabrication of elephant ivory consumer goods is rapidly entering the world of lost arts. Both the markets for ivory wares and the specialized skills and tooling used to produce them are vanishing beneath a new worldwide concern for the survival of elephants. Among the procedures unique to ivory processing, the sun-bleaching of piano keys occurred at the midpoint of a slow, multi-stage transfiguration of elephant tusks into the thin wafers of key veneers. One ivory-specific structure—a piano key bleach house—survives in North America to recall the inner workings of this process, and the outer global transformation in attitudes toward the industrial uses of natural versus synthetic materials.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB547758541/

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Authors & Contributors
Gordon, Robert B.
Charles A. Parrott
Gabriele Cruciani
Bathsheba Demuth
David B. Landon
Susan K. Appel
Concepts
Industrial archaeology
Buildings, Industrial
Factories
Architecture
Ivory industry
Textile Mills
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Connecticut (U.S.)
Pennsylvania (U.S.)
New Bedford, Mass
Tooele, Utah
Los Angeles (California)
Institutions
Delaware and Hudson Railroad Corporation
U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record
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