Green Options » Corozo

Tagua Ivory Nut Facts & Options

Delia Montgomery — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:52:07 +0000

Whether a farmer, designer, or shopper, tagua nuts are gems from nature to treasure. Especially crafts people would love to enhance their creativity with tagua. My previous blog focused on buttons, but other fab results are jewelry, carvings and utilitarian objets d’art.

Additional popular items are wine corks, key chains, dice, dominoes, and chess pieces. Look further to find cane and umbrella handles, pipes, tiles, and sewing needle cases. Most pieces are results from the fine art of scrimshaw.

The green and reasonably soft nut from the hard casing has the consistency of Jell-O. Once the nut is ripened, it becomes very hard, so this is the time to shape tagua into different molds.

Go Nuts Over Tagua Buttons

Delia Montgomery — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:06:58 +0000

A tagua nut sure has a lot of names. Like The Rain Forest Ivory or Vegetable Ivory. Other titles are Corozo (also spelled Corrozzo), Binroji Nut (Japanese), Steinnuss (German), and Coquilla Nut. A tagua nut is the fruit of a palm tree, primarily Phytelephas macrocarpa, which flourishes in tropical rain forests from Paraguay to Panama.

Natives replant palm trees for their seeds instead of logging them, which saves a bit of the rain forests. They polish the shell of the seeds and typically carve them into the shape of a button, living creature, or beautiful jewelry. Just think: an object much like a gem with all the qualities of ivory, but without harming wildlife.