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Black drink shell cup

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swamp monkey:
Mississippian mound builders used to make a cup from lightning whelk shells.  They cut out the central spiral, known as a columella, and had a form of scrimshaw for images on the outer shell. 

I used modern methods to make this cup.  The shell I used was a knobbed whelk (i think), and does not have the same spiral of a lightning whelk.  Lightning whelk have their openings on the left side.  Also this is a a half sized version.  Black drink cups were twice this size.  Needless to say this is not a faithful replica.  But it is close enough for ME!. :D

Below is the shell front and back, followed by a shot of the columella removed, and the pencil outline of the image.   The image is a Mississippian design found on a black drink cup artifact.  I modified it slightly for my taste and so it would fit on the smaller sized shell.

swamp monkey:
Before penciling the design I did a LOT of grinding and sanding on the outer surface.  I spent roughly 2 hours on that and I would be interested how long this would take with Stone Age tools.  After penciling in the design I marked it with a fine sharpie marker.  When I perform the grinding, dust can obscure pencil lines so ink stands out a bit better.   I used a small round diamond tipped bit with a rotary tool.

Following the engraving I sanded things down again to remove marker and pencil lines.  Then I sprayed the shell with enamel. 

I thought it looked pretty good at this point, but I knew the next step would prove me wrong.   >:D

swamp monkey:
I sprayed black paint on the design and wiped the paint as it dried.  Then I used sandpaper and steel wool to take the paint remnants off the high spots.  The idea was to leave the black in the grooves only.  The reality was that some of my grooves were not deep enough and some of my high surfaces had low spots I could not see with the naked eye.  So I sanded the paint off the high spots and in some cases it totally removed the lines I had engraved.  I had to grind those line sections in a second time. 

Repaint, re-wipe, and re-sanded.  This revealed a better image but I still had some paint down in micro grooves.  So I used some paint thinner, Q tips and cotton balls to clean up the areas around the design. 

swamp monkey:
This cup represents about 6 -7 hours of work.  BTW Notice the warrior's necklace.  I am convinced these are full columellas from whelk shells.  Did i mention shells are HARD and difficult to work with?   :o

Finally, I ground the inside remnants of the columella so it was smooth and sealed the artwork with spray enamel.

Walla!  A whelk shell black drink cup.   ;D ;D ;D
Thanks for looking!

JW_Halverson:
Amazing!  Great work! 

Just one question, how far were the mound building cultures from the area where the whelks were collected?

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