Featured Carved Necklace Help

I'm still comfortable with 'some kind of seeds' on the plain beads. Rose beads still a bit tough, despite the new, excellent, photos. The way they have yellowed where they would get touched by fingers is consistent with ivory. What do you see under magnification here?

 

Thanks Bronwen. Here is the best I can do. Looking at the rose beads with a loupe, AJ was correct, the rose beads are bone

 

Looking at this last photo, can definitely see that could well be. Am I right in thinking your main concern was whether this was ivory or something you didn't need to have legal/ethical conflicts about?

 

just a learning piece for me

 

I get that too. See, we could use a dedicated thread on the topic. I haven't been with the forum all that long & know I have seen many questions asking for differentiation between elephant ivory, resin, bone, warthog tusk, walrus tusk, mammoth ivory, tagua nut... In all cases we came to a consensus I agreed with, which is to say, I think collectively we do quite a good job with it, & could probably make an illustrated guide of our answers.

 

that is a great idea unless you handle ivory/nut/bone etc pieces all the time (which I don't) it is hard to figure some of them out. When I first saw this necklace, I was fairly sure it wasn't ivory, but after this discussion I will now know what to look for if I see another one. I can't believe I didn't think of seeds for the smooth beads on this, lesson learned

 

Exactly.

 

Am guessing horn; the parallel striations are typical of horn - unless you can brightly look into each perforation and see cross-hatching. Then, it'd be elephant ivory. Walrus ivory has parallel striations to those of horn, but is not translucent between the striations. If there's cross-hatching, they should be fairly weighty?
Clean with a soft, gentle soap, then rub with baby oil. (AK 30 years where we'd see it all, plus have friends in federal Wildlife....can't sell elephant ivory unless you have vintage/antique documentation, but I bet you knew that, huh.) :^)

 

This page is a little aggravating because you have to open other pages to see photos of most of them; still, informative:

https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/ww0901.htm

 

2 useful books if you want to pursue this topic:

Maggie Campbell Petersen: Gem and Ornamental Materials of Organic Origin. NAG Press, 2010. 9780719804212

Michael Locke: Bone, Ivory, and Horn: Identifying Natural Materials. Schiffer Pub., 2013.
9780764343070

 

Thank you. Got rid of thousands of books in the past five years, can't hurt to do a little restocking.

 

the beads look like seeds to me..

 

Very useful, thanks, Bronwen.

 

Great new photos, cx.
I think the oval beads are some sort of seed or other plant material, the carved beads bone. Bone can discolour from skin contact, just like ivory.