With voyages lasting years, lonely sailors longed for women/wives and land.The unique sweet scent of land goes unnoticed to those who have not spent time at sea; here it is represented by the flowers, an odor far nicer than the stench of the try works.One woman wears a bustle, the other a crinoline, which suggest different dates, but probably 1840s or 1850s.The images were likely drawn from Godey’sLady Book, and matching them to the source would constrain the dating of the tooth.The artist used deep parallel cuts to take the polychrome, which is still vivid.Most such work is considerably faded.The artist was very accomplished, and this could not have been his first tooth.However, we have not noted another example by the same hand.Tooth stands five inches high.
