Whaling was an important industry in nineteenth-century America. Hundreds of ships left New England and returned, sometimes after several years, with whale oil and other products derived from the huge mammal. When oil reserves were discovered on land and refineries developed, whaling declined. Memories of the industry live on in literature with Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and in art with scrimshaw, or whalebone carving. In this small nineteenth-century tinsel painting, the whale spouts water from its blowhole.

Lee Kogan, "Silver Whale," FOILED: Tinsel Painting in America (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2013), 90