Traditional German ivory carvers keep craft alive through mammoth tusk fragments

Dominik working on an ivory carving of Jesus in his father's workshop in Germany. Photos: dpa

It's very delicate manual work. The objects are crafted to fractions of a millimetre, and the tool resembles that of a dental technician – which might not be so strange considering that the material is also a tooth, specifically ivory.

In the small, tranquil German town of Erbach, located in the mountainous Odenwald region south of Frankfurt, Dominik Schott sits at his workbench and restores a small statue of Jesus.