As Indian and African ivory becomes scarcer and dearer and the international clampdown on poachers steps up, a handful of Russians have been actively reviving the art of ivory carving.Only they're not heading for the African or Indian sub-continent armed with muskets to illegally cull a few elephants.
They have found a legal and more abundant source closer to home in Siberia -- the tusks of long vanished woolly mammoths which roamed these vast, frozen plains from some 60 million to 10 thousand years ago.
Remarkably the sub-arctic conditions have kept their valuable tusks intact and free from fossilization and since they're already dead, who can complain.
Ivory carving from mammoth tusks is not a new art in Russia as the Hermitage's unveiling of a beautiful, ivory cross designed in Peter the Great's reign bears testament.
At the end of last week, the Hermitage exhibited this latest addition in its Rotunda as part of the "Cross and Rose" exhibition which displays, at the nearby Petropol Gallery, beautiful examples of carved mammoth ivory dating back to the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
The jewel in the crown, so to speak, is this magnificent six foot tall (two meter) contemporary representation of the ivory Apostle Cross which has been copied exactly from original drawings executed in the reign of Peter the Great.
The original cross, made for an altar, was partly created by Peter himself who though not religious, was a great craftsman in his own right.
During his famous royal progress abroad from 1697-8 in Europe and England, Peter learnt how to be a dab hand with the lathe and it was said he was so skilled a craftsman he could even, it was rumoured, shod a flea under a microscope.
Peter was fond of carving both bone and wood and was even thought quite good at it in his day. In the exhibition you can see the type of tools he used to make intricate snuff boxes, carved roses, chandeliers and miniature reliefs.
The tsar purchased a turner designed by Andrei Nartov -- a replica of which you can see in the gallery -- to produce carved objects and medallions which he made and then presented to his courtiers, visiting diplomats and overseas dignitaries as gifts.
In the Hermitage Rotunda you can see the huge medallions which were made in this way to go with the magnificent altar cross.
The cross symbolically signifies divine blessing from the Russian orthodox saints for his plan to build a new capital on the cold, wet and inhospitable marshes of the Gulf of Finland.
The orb-shaped base of the cross can be unscrewed to reveal a chamber for relics linked with the city's foundation and was designed to look like a round temple while the medallions portray the city's patron saints, depictions of the mighty Russian navy and cameos of the imperial family.
According to one version the original, whose blueprints still survive in the Hermitage's archives, was destroyed in a fire within years of its creation.
But this exact reproduction was commissioned by State Hermitage director, Dr Boris Piotrovsky from the Millionnaya Ulitsa based Petropol Gallery, which specializes in mammoth tusk carving, using the original 240 year old moulds and drawings.
Triumphal Arch, 1994, mammoth tusk, gilded bronze, wood.