SOLD FOR $14,400
Fine Polychrome Scrimshaw Sperm Whale Tooth by William Sizer (American 1801-1840), circa 1835, a three-quarter portrait of a well-dressed fashionable lady, within an oval sawtooth cameo and leaf-line secondary border; mounted on a cut and shaped silver base.
Height 6 in.

Sizer was born in Chester, Massachusetts and was the grandson of a Revolutionary War captain of Franco-Azorean descent from Middletown, Connecticut. More than a dozen known teeth are attributed to Sizer. He was a crew-member of the brig Juno (1839-1840) out of New Bedford, he died at sea in 1840 and is buried in Tahiti.
Reference: Frank, Stuart M., Ingenious Contrivances, Curiously Carved, published 2012, pg. 25.