|  It was, fortunately, a sunny day when we arrived at the home of John Van Opstal, perched below the huge cross on the hillside that overlooks
Horta, on the island of Faial, in the Azores, the mid-Atlantic archipelago.
Two days earlier, we had asked Van Opstal, the celebrated scrimshaw artist, if he would inscribe a heart, made of whale bone, purchased at
Horta's famous Peter Sport Café, with one of his wonderful whale engravings and he had invited us to come and collect the finished work.
Born and educated in Holland, John Van Opstal spent most of his adult life as an illustrator in Rotterdam. He was trained at the Academy of Art but went to work in the advertising industry as a commercial artist and enjoyed a thirty year career in that capacity.
The last thing on his mind, when he arrived in the Azores fifteen years ago, was scrimshaw. He had never heard of it, let alone seen any. When the people of Faial discovered John's abilities, they persuaded him to apply himself to working with whale teeth and bones and he discovered a whole new medium.
So enamoured did Van Opstal become of this technique that he has devoted himself to it entirely in the past few years, producing over three hundred 'illustrations', as he terms his scrimshaw works, each year. Apart from the rapidly dwindling supply of whale teeth and bones, John also receives mammoth bones from Europe, upon which he enjoys working, but says "When you start to get older it seems to take more energy to work the whole day. I hate that!"
 John tells us that, apart from two or three people on the island of Pico, two miles across the Faial channel, and two or three on the island of Bequia, in St.Vincent and the Grenadines, part of the Caribbean chain, where whaling is still practised on a very small scale, he knows of few others who make their living as scrimshaw artists. He qualifies that description by bemoaning the fact that, amongst those few, there is a tendency to waste the precious material by turning out 'tourist' works. Once a tooth or bone has been 'illustrated', it cannot easily be re-worked later. There is an excellent 'illustrator' on the island of Terceira, also in the Azores, so John tells us, who produces three or four works each year. In the Pacific, the people of Fiji apparently make gifts of scrimshaw works to one another, but John is not aware of any availability of such objects for sale. He tells us that a beautifully decorated tooth, for example, might be given by one Fijian to another as a token of apology for a wrongdoing.
Each year, John gives the latest batch of primary school children a lesson in scrimshaw. He takes along pieces of ivory, as the material is termed, regardless of which mammal provided it, and does an illustration in front of the class. He then produces pieces of the material upon which the coating of Indian ink has already been allowed to dry and invites the children to try creating an illustration for themselves, using the point of a geometry compass. The hope is that one or more of the children will be inspired by this experience and, perhaps, later in life, go on to become a scrimshaw artist as, and when, the
appropriate material becomes available.
We tell him of a thirteen-year-old Bequian boy who sold us two beautifully inscribed teeth, last April, which were purchased as gifts for the Managing Editor's nephews in the United States, and given to them a few days later. One bore a ship and the other a whale and the boy had worked them himself. John is pleased to hear this. Young people with an interest in doing this kind of work are rare, apparently.  As we wander around the living room of the very pleasant home that John built and moved into, a little less than three years ago, with his girlfriend Joke, we pause in front of a group of framed photographs. "The one at the back is my grandfather. He was born in 1815" John tells us "and started his family late in life."
 John himself has been divorced nearly twenty years and lives happily with Joke, whose daughter is just about to be married. Joke joins us for coffee. She will be leaving for Rotterdam the next day, followed by John a week later, just in time for the wedding.
"Children" says John "only call you when they need something. They know where you are, the rest of the time, but they are busy, you know." He laughs, roundly. This is a man who laughs a lot.
Near the family photographs, we notice a collection of unusual-looking teeth, including one with a reddish hue. "Diseased, you see," John explains, "and, if you cut into it, you will find other colours, also." We ask if he plans ever to illustrate any of the pieces in the group and he says he has no plans to do so. "It is interesting to keep them just as they are, because they are different."
The views from the windows of this spacious room are stunning. The green, rolling hills of Faial and the harbour way below, the peak of the volcano over on Pico, all inspiring sights.
We wander into the room that houses John's collection. On the floor is a whale over two feet long, made from scraps of whale bone all put together in a mosaic sculpture.
 "It is good to see the small pieces used instead of being wasted" John remarks, before taking down a particularly lovely tooth to show us.
 On a shelf, a disturbing picture of a whale's head being flensed, many years ago,
shows the vastness of the creature, and we look at a number of
artifacts made from the ivory of different mammals.
Returning to the living room, we ask how he decides what subject to illustrate on a given piece. Is it
a question of inspiration? He laughs and tells us that it is more a matter of looking at what he has in stock. "If I have three whales and four ships ready to go, then I will probably choose to do a whale next, it's as simple as that" John says.
"I make commercial decisions, it is a habit from my advertising
days."
We notice a very rounded pair of ivories, beautifully illustrated with jungle cats, mounted and displayed in a corner of the room.
These turn out to be the tusks of a hippopotamus. John doesn't know who made these very fine illustrations. The object was a gift to him. A variety of different coloured inks have been used, to give the engraved felines their appropriate colourings. Apparently, soot used to be used as a colouring medium. These days Indian inks are almost exclusively used.
The piece is even more stunning when one gets close to it.
 John
hands over the heart, beautifully engraved with a sperm whale. It will
be worn with great pleasure.
Many of the larger whale teeth in the Museum of Scrimshaw, over Peter Sport
Café, down in Horta, came from John's collection. In the last issue, we
promised to try and show you something of the museum. We've kept our
word on the Memory Lane
pages in the Naval History section.
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