Hornbill ivory

Hornbill ivory (also called "golden jade" or calao ivoire in French[1]) is a precious ornamental material derived from the helmeted hornbill (Buceros vigil), a large bird of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo.

Native peoples in the helmeted hornbill's range, such as the Kenyah and Kelabit, have long carved the casques.

According to Tom Harrisson, writing in the first (1960) edition of The Birds of Borneo: It is likely that the casques were mainly exported raw, and worked with a heat treatment and pressing—of which no detailed description survives—in China, to preserve and heighten the lovely deep golden and surface red patina of the fresh ivory.

While the Borneo usages persist to this day, all trace of the art of the Chinese carver seems to have vanished.

Very little has survived of a remarkable craft which undoubtedly paid for many of the old jars, plates, and beads still decorating the longhouses or wives of better-off Bornean pagans many generations later.