A Carved Ebony Asian Elephant.
With bone tusks, toenails and eyes.
Early 20th century
H:15cm
We often attribute the elephant to Africa as it is one of the most prominent of all of the wild animals on the African continent. However, in the world of vintage if you come across an elephant ornament, it is more likely to have originated from Asia, as the Asians have a far larger cultural attachment to the elephant and over the millennia have used elephants ceremonially and for work. This one is most likely to have been made in what was once a British colony called Ceylon or what we know of today as Sri Lanka, which has a long history of wood carving.
In the late 1900s when Sri Lanka was still under British rule there were companies who employed carvers in factories where they would mass produce, by hand, carved wooden souvenirs which would then be exported across Asia and to Africa.