Concentric Ivory Balls
Unknown, Guangzhou workshop · Qing dynasty, second half of the nineteenth century
On a tall carved stand, an ivory sphere the size of a grapefruit hangs like a lantern, its surface pierced with clouds, dragons and tiny figures. Look through the holes and you see another sphere inside, also carved, and inside that another, and another. The layers turn freely and independently, more than twenty of them, all cut from a single piece of ivory without a join. Beneath the ball the stand is itself a tower of carved ivory figures, flowers and chains, so that the whole object is over half a metre tall.
The balls were made in Guangzhou, the port city in the south where craftsmen worked for both the imperial court and foreign merchants. The method is a kind of patient magic. The carver drilled a set of conical holes from the surface to the centre, then used curved, hooked blades inserted through the holes to cut the ivory into separate shells one after another, starting from the innermost. Each shell was then decorated through the holes with the same tiny tools. A single ball could take months. Look at how the outer decoration is the richest, with dragons twisting through clouds and human figures in relief, and how the inner shells have simpler geometric patterns because there was so little room to work.
Europeans called them devil's work balls, convinced they could not be made by human hands. The Qing court collected them as curiosities, and this example came to Taiwan with the palace collection. Today ivory carving is banned and the skill is nearly lost, which makes these objects both wonders and reminders of a trade that cost countless elephants. The museum shows them among the curios on the third floor, near the olive stone boat and other miniature carvings.
Did You Know? The innermost ball is carved first, before it is separated from the outer layers, using hooked blades pushed in through the drilled holes.
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