The yellowing does not come from touching but from exposure to sunlight as far as I am informed.
I don't think that that pattern of yellowing is consistent with a pattern of light. The left hand knight for example is yellow exactly where you'd expect shadow and palest on the most exposed surface. I still suspect some cleaning.
The yellowing does not come from touching but from exposure to sunlight as far as I am informed.
I don't think that that pattern of yellowing is consistent with a pattern of light. The left hand knight for example is yellow exactly where you'd expect shadow and palest on the most exposed surface. I still suspect some cleaning.
You may be right there and the way I commented was probably misleading. Light exposure is only one reason for discoloring on the surface. But there are others as well, of course. Any exposure to other substances can change the appearance of ivory, in particular over longer periods of time. This can include grease and oil from touching or treating the ivory (which is why I would never apply oil to treat ivory in the same way as wood), but also any kind of cleaning agent or the like.
I wonder at the knights all cracking but the rooks (also quite thick) not. The patina is uneven: compare the two bishops, on the left-hand bishop there is no yellowing where the fingers would touch it, and on the right it is quite yellowed, you might ask if they have been cleaned. The two rooks, which have carving all over them and which might be harder to clean, are more consistently yellowed. Keep in mind, I am no expert, just habitually paranoid.
The yellowing does not come from touching but from exposure to sunlight as far as I am informed.
The different appearance of the rooks (which are also extremely tall compared to the other pieces) is one of the reasons why I assumed that these are mixed in from another set. Also, the style does not fit at all.
The cracking in the knights was one of the reasons I believed this to be fossil ivory, because my assumption is that these cracks were already existing in the original material and did not appear later (which is a guess only, though). Cracking of such sort is not uncommon in fossil ivory, when it is not dried carefully, but too quickly. This is how mammoth ivory usually looks like.