Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed nowBy subscribing, you are agreeing to the privacy policy. Unsubscribe anytime.
Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Sculptures / Chinese Mammoth Ivory Tusk Carving of Three Bears Fishing for Salmon, Heng Yi
East Asia, China. A tusk section worked in the round with three bears fishing a salmon run, carved in fossil mammoth ivory. The largest animal crowns the group, jaws parted above a leaping fish caught mid-arc; two smaller bears press against its shaggy flank, their pelts cut in dense chiseled striations that play against the polished swell of breaking waves below. The reserved crest of the tusk rises behind the group like a rock face, preserving the natural taper and curvature of the material, while undercut openwork among the reeds and surf lightens the mass. Signed with the studio name Heng Yi, rendered variously as "Enduring Art" or "the art of Heng." Supplied with a pierced and scroll-carved hardwood display stand. Mammoth ivory, thawed from Siberian and Alaskan permafrost and traded in quantity since the late twentieth century, became the preferred substrate of Chinese carving workshops as elephant ivory moved under CITES control. Because the tusks are fossil material from a species extinct for millennia, they sit outside the elephant-ivory prohibitions, and carvers in Guangdong and Beijing adapted the traditional repertoire to a stock that is often smaller, more fissured, and mottled with mineral staining. Studios commonly signed with a workshop or art-name rather than a personal one, so Heng Yi is best read as a shop mark rather than the hand of a documented individual. The bear-and-salmon subject belongs to the export market rather than to classical Chinese iconography, where northern wildlife sold alongside immortals and landscapes; the tusk-section format, cutting a scene into the wall of the tusk while leaving its natural profile legible, is a long-established Chinese answer to the constraints of the material. Item # 205060
Estimate:£1,432.53
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorSculptures
Estimate:
£1,432.53
ANNA PETRUS. BOKSTÖD, TENN OCH MÄSSING, UTFORMAT SOM LEJON, FÖR FIRMA
09/29/2026
£2,711.59
Est: £2,272.37
Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed now
KAI NIELSEN. SKULPTUR, "VENUS KALIPYGOS". TERRAKOTTA. FÖR P. IPSENS ENKE.
09/29/2026
£26.36
Est: £37.87
EERO ARNIO. Skulptur, "Puppy", Me Too Collection, Magis, Italien.
09/29/2026
£37.66
Est: £91.37
