Artifiction: Grimm/Shaw

Measuring just under 6.2 inches (16 centimeters) in height, this walrus tusk, yellowed by weather and distressed by passage through many hands, is engraved with an array of finely etched images portraying heroines drawn from the literary works of Germany's most famous folklorists as well as those of the equally renowned Anglo-Irish playwright often referred to by his initials GBS. The object has come to be known among maritime museum curators and fans of nautical lore as The Grimm/Shaw Scrimshaw. Carved across its surface, probably with a sharp needle, are an array of fine incisions which have been filled in with an ink made of candle black and tobacco juice, among which are the portrasit heads of Clever Gretel, Eliza Doolittle, Little Red Riding Hood and Major Barbara Undershaft. The identity of the artist or, more likely, of the artists (the graphic style employed to portray Shaw's heroines is definitely distinct in character from that used in picturing the Grimm Brothers' females) are unknown. Probably these men -- and they would most certainly have been men -- doubtless worked as crew members aboard one of the armada of early 20th-century whaling vessels shipping out of the UK to fish off the coasts of Greenland. Carved no earlier than 1912, the year Pygmalion was first brought to the stage, the piece is currently in the hands of a private Japanese collector of nautical paraphernalia residing in Stonington, Connecticut, USA.