Shipping from Italy

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Athanase

Are there paints easily reversible?
To paint flintlock rifles with ivory inlay decoration or sheaths with some small, ivory-decorated parts?

For handles ivory in revenche I do not see how to hide them discreetly.

Back in the 1990s, when CITES enforcement was not what it is now, some dealer colleagues from the UK used to come to US antique arms fairs to buy. As a favor I would handle shipping for them, and on ivory hilts we agreed on the use of automotive spray enamel in gloss or matte black, applied without a primer. It masked the color perfectly and was safely removable with mineral spirits --without a primer it did not adhere all that well, which of course made it vulnerable to a customs inspector with sharp fingernails. But the ruse worked.

I wouldn't have tried it on any surface that included wood, however. And now I wouldn't do it at all, because enforcement is tighter and the penalty, besides a fine, includes confiscation and destruction of the item (see the post I wrote above for a nasty example). The last time I did this was for an English gent who bought a nice ivory horse head shamshir at auction in the US and the seller refused to ship overseas. The blade was a piece of crap so my customer just said to yank and toss it, the hilt was what he was after. I stress the word LAST, I no longer accept any items for restoration that contain any CITES-affected material, not just ivory. It's just not worth it.

Please, fellas -- don't cheat. And keep up on the CITES regs, as re the scope of species involved. It isn't about just ivory, tortoise, rhino and beagle feathers anymore. A friend just reported that a shipment of Oriental weapons sent to him from overseas had one item yanked -- a sword with ray skin covered handle. The inspector demanded that he prove that the species of ray fish that the hilt was covered with was not one of the endangered ones! And keeping in mind that most Japanese swords have ray skin of one species or another under the silk wrapping, you can see where this could possibly lead. And it wasn't too long ago that the Gibson guitar factory was shut down for awhile until the feds verified the source of one lot of African ebony that luthiers use for fingerboards on the necks of instruments.