IVORY CARVINGS	71
	The ivory carvers of Dieppe in France long enjoyed an altogether special reputation. During the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries the art was cultivated here with pronounced success, its practice being in many cases handed down from father to son, but the prosperity of the ivory carvers gradually declined toward the close of the eighteenth century. The financial distress immediately preceding the French Revolution, and the disturbance of all industrial enterprises caused by that terrible political up­heaval, had much to do with this; added causes are alleged to have been the production of so many beautiful objects in porcelain, and the introduction into France of the quaint Chinese ivories, which caught the popular fancy and were preferred to the formal and traditional art of the Dieppe carvers. Indeed it must be confessed that the art here had become too mechanical, a mere copying and reproducing of the older models, which when first produced could lay claim to no small share of originality. By the early part of the nineteenth century the lowest point had been reached, and the few ivory carvers who still exercised their art in Dieppe found it difficult to dispose of their product. Now, however, a change occurred, English tourists began to frequent the country, and what had lost its charm for the French appears to have appealed to their taste; they bought freely and paid well. This revival was quite rapid, so that by 1832 much of the lost ground had been recovered. At this time the three best ivory carvers, who had their establishments in the Grand 'Rue of the city, were MM. Bland, Flammand, and Thomas. Among other quaint forms of carving practised here at this time were the magic balls, so favoured by the Chinese, as many as twelve, one within the other, and en­tirely separated from each other, being carved out of a single sphere of ivory.* *Vitel, "Histoire de Dieppe," Paris, 1844, pp. 341-343.