With demand for ivory carving falling, Li Jiulong, the older Li's student, is undertaking a master's degree which sees him working with lacquer -- a traditional colored finish applied to wood.

BEIJING – China has announced a one-year suspension on imports of carved ivory products from Africa, but conservationists said the largely symbolic move would do nothing in itself to stem the ...

The history of ivory carving goes back to the most remote antiquity. Centuries before the Christian era we can point to examples in the days of the earliest dynasties of Assyria and Egypt.

Today China closes the first of its state-licensed ivory carving factories and retailers, a move conservationists hail as a big step toward saving elephants from extinction.

Ivory Worship Thousands of elephants die each year so that their tusks can be carved into religious objects. Can the slaughter be stopped?

The ivory is carved with depictions of a mythical sphinx and a lion, along with two tall plants that may represent the mythical "tree of life." (Image credit: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) ...

Li Chunke began carving ivory after leaving school as a 15-year-old boy. Today, at 68, this master craftsman is working until the early hours of every morning, trying to finish a 20-inch statuette ...

Ivory carving master Zhang Minhui started exploring use of ox bones for carving 20 years ago, when China-made ivory began losing American and European customers after the Convention on International ...

In the ivory carving industry's 1970s heyday, Hong Kong factories employed as many as 3,500 carvers. Only a half-dozen part-time carvers are left, along with 10 to 20 full-time mammoth tusk ...

Ivory carving, of course, dates from Eskimo pre-history. Harpoon heads, household implements and combs were whittled from it.