The bone abacus in a painted wooden frame was produced on the lathe by craftsmen from the town of Kholmogory near Archangel in the early 1700s. In the seventeenth century Kholmogory was one of the most important Russian artistic centres for bone carving. Craftsmen from there were constantly being summoned to Moscow, to the Armoury Chamber, to make combs, pointers, chess sets, goblets and staffs. In the early eighteenth century interested in the northern bone- and ivory-carvers still endured. Ivory toilet articles were in great demand with St Petersburgers.

For inexpensive everyday items the long bones of cattle were used after being scoured of fat and sawn into narrow sheets. More expensive items were made from walrus tusks and the excavated tusks of mammoths.

Interestingly in the early seventeenth century John Tradescant the Elder took an ivory abacus back to England for inclusion in the collection that eventually became the core of the Ashmolean in Oxford, the world’s oldest public museum.