This incredible carving shows some damage--missing part of the tail (hard to know how long it once was), one inlaid eye (carved of baleen I believe) and with what I believe is a glued repair to the trunk about midway down, and perhaps something once extended from the mouth as well as the surface is rough there--but what a fantastic creature nonetheless. What sort of creature I am not sure and have not found another quote like it; perhaps a mythological one, and/or in the process of transformation from sea to land, with these fantastic tiny legs on its sides seeming perhaps to just be emerging. Carved of tusk with intensively detailed scrimshawing to the back and around the face, and with detailed carving for the red colored teeth on either side of the head.
4 11/16" l x 1 3/4" w x 3/4" t. Alaskan Inuit, 1st half of the 20th century I believe.
