| Brief Description |
This pair of scrimshaw-decorated cattle horns is believed to be from a Highland cow, as they come from Scotland. Wooden blocks are nailed into open ends of the horns and the tips planed down to be octagonal in cross-section.
Scrimshaw was originally created by whalers who engraved the bones, teeth and baleen of whales and then highlighted the etchings with pigments. The art form was later applied to the bones, teeth and horns of other animals.
One horn has three scrimshaw etchings of a young woman and a basket of flowers and foliage. The other has three scrimshaw etchings, two of young women and one of a woman offering water from a jug to a young man and inscribed beneath "Hagar & Ishmael by B.J.C.". The image of Hagar and Ishmael comes from an 1842 painting by Charles Lock Eastlake called "Hagar offering Water to her Son, Ishmael, in the Desert".
Hagar and Ishmael are figures from the Biblical Old Testament. Ishmael was Abraham's oldest son, born from his wife Sarah's handmaiden, Hagar. Although born of Hagar, according to Mesopotamian law, Ishmael was received as Sarah's son (Genesis 16:2). When Sarah miraculously gave birth to Isaac, she asked Abraham to banish Hagar with her son to the desert. When Hagar and Ishmael ran out of food and water they sat down and the mother could not bear to look at her child dying but an angel appeared to Hagar telling her that he would survive to become the father of a great nation, the Ishmaelites. Hagar then found a source of water. Ishmael is recorded as having died at the age of 137 (Genesis 25:17).
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