Tagua Nut Vegetable Ivory

Description

Tagua nut vegetable ivory when dried out can be carved just like elephant ivory; it is often used for beads, buttons, figurines and jewelry, and can be dyed. Vegetable ivory has been used extensively to make dice, knife handles, and chess pieces. It is a very hard and dense material. More recently, palm ivory has been used in the production of bagpipes

The kernels are picked up from the ground after the ripe fruit has detached from the Palm tree and forest animals have taken care of the pericarp, or harvested when ripe and the pericarp manually removed. As the nut shrinks when it hardens a small hollow cavity can form in the centre. A tagua palm can take up to 15 years to mature. But once it gets to this stage it can go on producing vegetable ivory for up to 100 years. In any given year a tagua palm can produce up to 20 pounds (about 9kg) of vegetable ivory

It is often not possible to know whether the inside of the nut will have a small cavity in the centre until it is cut into. Therefore, when carving, it is common to either incorporate the hole or cavity into carvings or not carve deep enough to reach a potential cavity.

Yandles Timber