by the Creative Museum:

From the Fourteenth Century, Dieppe sailors docked their boats on the coast of Guinea to collect ivory. Instead of selling their precious raw material to Paris workshops, they learned to carve great works of art themselves and kept the profit.

The bindweed flowers carved onto this ivory diadem are hinged to a tortoiseshell comb. It was probably made in Dieppe, France, c. 1850 – 1870.