Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Ivory versus plastic tops

I'll throw this one out there:
What about mastadon ivory? These animals have been extinct for thousands of years. A layperson would never be able to tell the difference to elephant ivory. I know -I have some.
Mastadon or mammoth ivory is legally available for piano keys (and whatever else - jewelery etc). In fact, a few companies even offer it on their new pianos.

How do you feel about that?

The first time I played Ivory keys, I found the touch and feel of my dreams. Now that I have been playing Ivory full-time, plastic keys always leave me disappointed. I hope to play Ivory for the rest of my life. The feel is not just a little better; it is vastly superior, in my opinion.

It is true, by the way, that damp fingers stick to those Ivory keys like they were glued. Just the nature of Ivory.

The yellowing of Ivory keys is removeable--if you want to remove it. The yellowing is considered an embellishment and proof of age, adding to the value of Ivory collectibles.

As for the slaughter of elephants, I have heard from a number of sources that a certain amount of Ivory has in recent years become available in compliance with international law. I have seen apparently reputable companies offering ultra-expensive new-Ivory collectibles, and I have a hard time believing that their Ivory is from an illegal source, what with them advertising it openly in numerous American magazines.

I have heard different accounts about where this (supposedly) legal Ivory originates. Some say it is Mammoth Ivory. Others say that the U.N. approved five African countries to sell Ivory because they were being overrun with elephants and the countries needed the money. It is usually added that because Ivory has become profitable, people in those countries are breeding elephants and so they have more elephants than ever--you have heard that sort of thing about the Bison--which leads some people to conclude that an effective way to save elephants as a species is to legalize the sale of Ivory.

(You need not read all the following links to see my point--I put them here just for the curious to pick and choose as you like.)

Or maybe it was three African countries, depending on which source you read:

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-12-01.asp

Before you read that article and conclude that it must have been a one-time sale in 2002, look at this (for example):

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-05-03.asp

Yes, that post describes another one-time sale, this time four years later. Can you have two "one-time" sales of Ivory? Hmmmm... something fishy about all this.

Maybe the sale was delayed for years:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3046.html

There is of course controversy about whether legalizing Ivory sales will lead to the elephant species' destruction or salvation:

http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol_7p119.pdf

Some African countries reportedly demand legal Ivory sales, allegedly to combat terrible elephant-pest problems:

http://forests.org/archive/africa/ovelezim.htm

Some of the legal Ivory trade has apparently been approved very recently:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/06/070604-ivory-sale.html

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/14/asia/ivory.php

Still other people say lots of estates include giant Ivory tusks which are so numerous that they account for much of the new Ivory collectibles:

http://www.ivorybuyer.com/

As you can see, the sources do not give a clear, consistent picture of precisely what has occurred. Confirmation or disconfirmation of the legality of new Ivory can be found depending on where you look and who you ask. Even official sources (the U. S. Government) will give you conflicting answers depending on the office you contact.

I am not very confident that any sources I could find necessarily got the story straight. There is enormous potential for disinformation on this topic, where guilt and greed are vying for a chance to veil the truth. It is the nature of the news business that almost every news story is tainted with deliberate and accidental misinformation, and this goes double--no, triple--on a topic as sensitive as Ivory and endangered species. I am still waiting to see a thorough, clear, well-researched article on new Ivory--one that includes a mature, wide-ranging, penetrating perspective on the issue. Probably it is yet to be written. You can get plenty of stuff from obviously-biased partisans, and from reporters who were rushing to meet a deadline. I would like to see something really good for a change.

Oops, I see I am off topic.

To return to the original question:

Anyway, I can play much better on Ivory keys. Fantastic touch and feel. I just love them.

I HATE plastic - it's awful. Plastic collects condensation. It's like playing in a swamp; slows you down. I have a Steinway with ivory (personally, I think it's probably walrus tusk these days), but it makes all the difference in the world...

Walrus tusk!!!!!!



I like that!! Thank you Auntie Lynn. I will continue to salvage old keys for the reclcled ivory. At $3500 for new ones it might be worth the salvage.

I boycott ivory. New or recycled, it stimulates the market for ivory to purchase it, and thus, stimulates further slaughter.

Tomasino

With a lack of solid information, I cannot say if I agree or disagree with tomasino. I am fully prepared to feel guilty for buying my vintage Steinway, but, for all I know, buying Ivory will ultimately save elephants as a species.

It might not, too. I don't know.

Incidentally, not all new Ivory is necessarily "the remains of an animal cruelly slaughtered." Elephants with tusks can die from disease, old age, mating battles, falls, etc.; their tusks break, parts drop, and so forth. It is not quite so simple.

Economically it is certainly possible to imagine a boom in Ivory trade that leads to a vast increase in the number of elephants on the planet because of the profit potential of breeding them in large numbers.

Could it be that outlawing the sale of Ivory is just another in a long line of quick fixes that actually makes it more likely that elephants will become extinct? I see no easy answer to such a question.

I can imagine someone saying, "Hey, I am just going to boycott Ivory, because I want to err on the side of caution and save the elephants," but again I cannot agree with that so easily: if we could save elephants as a species by legalizing Ivory--some large, international, responsible bodies have apparently agreed that this is so--then it would be pretty darn irresponsible of us to block the legalization of Ivory and thereby condemn elephants to extinction.

I can find no easy answer here.

(Are people deleting their posts to this thread or what? I keep on reading posts but then they disappear. What is going on?)

(Aha, now I see: the exact same thread was started in two different forums. Nice. )

Hmmm I wonder if they can use mother of pearl ..like they do on guitar inlays? or my jazz archtop... abalone?

I think pearl or shell is too soft and even more porous.

Thank you Prospero. It is wrong to think that all ivory is a result of slaughter. Ivory is and has been a high priced item and there will always be poachers. I don't think the piano keytop market drives people to become poachers. That field is probably saturated already.

That is the same for me, Tomasino. I respect people's choice, but no ivory for me, whatever the source. I have taken similar decisions regarding other materials or other subjects, because what I have seen has prompted me to do it, but that is beyond the scope of this piano forum. I strongly feel that as consumers we are much more powerful than what we think.

Mother of pearl has been used on harpsichords, but abalone is endangered as well, and you need far more of them for a set of keys than you need elephants.

Anybody know how many keys you can get per tusk?

Most of these comments deal with ethics rather than function. Putting ethics aside for a moment, my preference is plastic keytops. I have played both over a long period of time and find absolutley no problems with them. That being said, I have no copious sweating problems as others have opined, so it comes down to a durability and cosmetic thing rather than anything else. They look fantastic and to me anyway feel fine. I certainly do not lack traction in any of the demanding literature that I play.

Thank you John for bringing the discussion back to functionality. I've had the opportunity to play a few Kawai's lately and they all seem to have this sticky stuff on the keys called Neotex. At first I didn't like it, but it did give a higher degree of traction and I was able to play faster and better with fewer mistakes from fingers slipping off keys. I won't claim to have gotten used to it, it's still sticky stuff on the keys, but I have experienced the benefit of it.

My limited experience with ivory is that it was very comfortable with slightly more traction than plastic depending on the humidity. If it's hot and humid fingers will sweat and get slippery on plastic. In a dry climate the opposite happens, the skin gets dry and slippery on plastic keys. The Neotex is an improvement over plain plastic, the stickiness of it is a bit uncomfortable to me on fast notes, but the stickiness of it also offers a stability on held notes that I did like. I would be very interested in trying ox bone, it seems to me it could share many of the benefits of ivory without the ethical issues attached.

Ethics is the issue. Functional issues are trivial in comparison.

Tomasino

...and hang your heads in shame those who think otherwise!



Steve Chandler, not very 'comfortable' for the original owner of the ivory, was it?

THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION IMAGINABLE FOR THIS INHUMANITY!

Absolutely no excuse to kill another elephant for its ivory. The ethical solution is to use synthetic materials that simulate ivory, or use recycled ivory. I'm sure no one on this forum actually advocates elephant hunting just because it leads to more "comfortable" piano keys. Let's tone it down a bit.

Forum members, harvesting ivory is illegal. We all know it. No one here is advocating it. The question is which keytop is preferred, by whom and why. This has absolutely nothing to do with the ethics of harvesting animals for their tusks. I'd be the last to advocate using it in this day and time. THE TOPIC IS NOT ETHICS!!! And for that matter no one is denying that ethics are all important. If any lister is implying that keyboards should not be restored using existing already harvested and generally well-used old ivory, they need to spend more time practicing and less time typing. Enough of the posturing already.

Actually the original statement was that if plastic had been around 500 years ago, nobody would be using ivory for key tops. Nobody would ever have used it, so nobody would know what it feels like.

So maybe the question is: if you had always played on plastic key tops, nothing else, would you want something else?

Incidentally, you could easily get enough old ivory to cover the keyboard on your computer. Have any of you who claim it makes a difference ever done that? If not, why not?

I showed the elephant photograph to my ethics class at the university. A student in the front row raised her hand and said, "What, does this guy think you can settle a complicated question like this by showing a picture of a dead elephant?" The class burst out laughing. I said her comment was interesting, and that I did not think that is what the PW poster meant by it.

I still think the question is difficult.

If we just stop buying Ivory, we might not see any more dead elephant pictures, because there might not be any more elephants left anywhere to photograph, which would be terribly sad. A picture does not prove otherwise.

Of course perhaps we should stop buying Ivory. I think it is difficult to know one way or the other.

Another student said, "I think some people enjoy feeling self-righteous and angry, so they simplify complicated things. That way you can have black and white, bad guys and good guys, and they can just hate the bad guys. They want life to be simpler than it really is."

I said her comment was interesting, too, but I doubt very much that the PW poster really wants life to be simpler than it is.

I certainly do not claim to know better than anyone else. All to the contrary, I am skeptical of those who claim to know better than me.

Many people who know a lot more about this question than I do say that they are unsure just what should be done to save the elephants as a species. They have been studying the problem for years, they have gotten grants, they have traveled, they have researched, they have been at it much longer than I have--and they still are uncertain what to do.

On tough questions like this, I wonder sometimes where people can find certainty. I do not see it.

Maybe it is easier to be certain if you know that nobody is really going to take action based on what you say.

But what if people are looking to you for guidance? What if your opinion is going to influence people who make policy?

What if you blithely say, "Yes, reject the proposals to legalize Ivory trade," and people listen, and they say "trust him," and they take your advice, and they act accordingly?

What if then, many years down the road, you live to see the extinction of elephants, and it comes back to haunt you that those magnificent creatures might be still alive in abundance if you had been a smarter person?

Well, then, you might want something more solid than pictures before you give people your advice.

I've played on ivory as well as plastic, and to be honest, the ivory does feel nice, but I'll stick with plastic. To me the plastic is the modern replacement for something that was unavailable 500 years ago.

Ivory natural keys became popular once the trade opened up to Africa and India during the 19th-century colonial expansion by Great Britian and other European nations. So in my opinion, if the material was difficult to get all along, then alternatives would have been used such as wood surfaces, bone, and shell.

It is interesting to note, that prior to the 19th century, that not all keyboards were covered in bone or ivory. Ivory and other white materials were very expensive so were used only on the very best expensive instruments, or used sparingly.

In many cases, the keyboards were made with wood veneers, or painted with only the smallest amounts of bone or ivory used for the sharps, or perhaps as details on the arcades (key fronts) for example. My Italian virginal has boxwood naturals and oak sharps just like the original that it was based on. My clavichord has black painted naturals and bone sharps. (reverse keyboard). The natural keys are extremely smooth on this instrument, and you can't tell that they are painted or not.

John