whale of a tale?

You may have read that risqué tale about Tattoos and Scrimshaw: The Art of the Sailor, the B.C. Vancouver Maritime Museum exhibit including two dozen erotic carvings on sperm whale teeth presumably dating back to the 19th century.  The family-friendly locale gained notoriety when a local mom took her two sons, ages two and three, to inadvertently see things like this (photostream at link with sexually graphic content).  Such a twitter went up that Stephen Colbert hilariously featured the issue on his show.  The National Post now reports that the artifacts are fake - and not because they are not naughty - but because the pornography is not from the 19th century.  James Delgado, director of maritime heritage for the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a former executive director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum - previously called in expert Stewart Frank, a Massachusetts-based curator and authority in the realm of fake scrimshaw.  Apparently, the market "abounds with specimens attempting to masquerade as the work of a Moby Dick-era whaler."  Said Mr. Frank, "It's all a fake."  At which Mr. Delgado, during his tenure, squirreled the material away in museum storage with a report on their findings.

From the Post:

The style was indeed too modern to have come from the 1800s, but the real “smoking gun” could be seen in the cracks of the antique ivory itself. The engravings, which had likely been done with a machine, were conducted over top of the existing cracks — indicating a recent engraving, even if the whale teeth themselves were authentic.

Mr. Frank even had a possible culprit; an unknown carver in the Los Angeles area that had been selling fake erotic scrimshaw since at least the 1970s. “He said it was likely the work of one person who unscrupulously took in this collector who wouldn’t know otherwise,” said Mr. Delgado.

As for the otherwise controversial issues surrounding the show, the show goes on, with an additional disclaimer to the one accompanying the museum's family-friendly photo ad, but one that was there all along;  i.e.:

This whole arrangement was known to the museum’s current managers, of course, which is why they posted a sign warning that some of the pieces have had their “authenticity questioned,” but that “it was felt that the images depicted were true to the period.”

 “We can’t say for sure if these examples are from the period, but even if they were produced in the 1920s, does that make them fake because they weren’t produced in the 19th century by whalers?” said current museum director Simon Robinson.

*Photo credits/top, Vancouver Sun/photographer: Arlen Redekop/Tattoos & Scrimshaw: The Art of the Sailor exhibit at Vancouver Maritime Museum/bottom, Vancouver Sun/photographer: Arlen Redekop/"A whalebone carving showing a captain preoccupied with land-based pursuits from Tattoos & Scrimshaw: The Art of the Sailor exhibit on now at the Vancouver Maritime Museum."