Someone could write a book or at least a monograph on the subject of how walrus ivory was:
1)First identified as an article of interest,
2) How it became a desirable commodity in Central Asia and Persia/India,
3 Who who the groups and ethnicities were who formed the trading network for it.
That would be a way to frame a narrative and organize a journey that would encompass cultures, histories, and artistic centers--and a discussion of various types of weapons and other utensils for which walrus ivory was used as decoration.
Elephant ivory was an ancient and valuable material, already familiar to artists and connoisseurs. Walrus ivory must have had special appeal as something new and exotic. Would be interesting to know if special properties were ascribed to it, as it reached these Turkic, Persian, Afghan and Indian/Sikh/Moghul areas.
From the Far North to Central Asia and into North India - what a journey. What was the human and cultural chain of contact?
And it would be interesting to figure out how early it first appeared at various courts in Central Asia and Persia/India as an artistic medium.
There might have been one emporium that could have played a part: Nizhni-Novgorod, site of a very important trading fair into the 19th Century.
Marquis Alphonse de Custine travelled to the fair at Nijni (his spelling) in 1839. He noted that precious stones were traded there, along with furs of every description, iron goods, tea, kashmir wool and that each commodity area was the size of a city.
Long before, Custine informs us, the fair had taken place on the property of a boyar, Makarieff, and was later transferred to the nearby town of Nizjni
http://books.google.com/books?id=ksg...-1&output=html
Russians, Persians, Kalmucks, Tibetans, Kirghiz, Chinese, all and more came to trade and exchange goods.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ksg...ed=0CBoQ6AEwAg
Am wondering if it was through the medium of the Nijni emporium that this novel and expensive material from the far North (walrus ivory) could have made its way to the courts of the Emirs--and onto the two pesh kabz daggers Mr Ondaatje was so fortunate to find, to love and bring home after his visit to Sindh.
To verify this, we would have to find primary source documents placing Russians in Nijni or the earlier Makrieff fair at the node of the walrus ivory trade route.
Custine while at Niznithat the Russians got much of their wealth producing iron, from mines in the Urals, staffed by convicted prisoners. He describes the iron goods section as being the size of a town.
Final note: Can any iron ore be used to create fine wootz? Or is only ore from certain sources the correct material for true wootz?
Iron production in the Urals began to pick up during the reign of Peter the Great (1680s to 1722) who needed all the Russian made cannon he could get in his war against Charles II of Sweden.
So Russia became a very important source of iron starting in the early to
mid 18 th century.
Would be interesting to do a trace and see any of this Russian produced iron have made its way to smiths who knew how to create wootz steel.
Probably for this one needs metallurgy experts who are friends and have the right lab equipment including a spectrometer.
Trading the metallurgical signatures of various blades would be a great parallel to the work being done on the human genome and how our ancestors have travelled the world.