Tagua Nuts - The Story

The Incredible Hand Carved Tagua Nuts

When expertly carved, a Tagua Nut is one of the most extraordinary focal beads you can ever hope to find. These nuts are the product of a palm tree (Phylelephas Equatorialis) that grows as high as a four-story building and is a “green” or renewable resource native to Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. The pod in which the nuts slowly grow to the size of a hen’s egg is called a cazeba. When it first falls from the tree, the nuts have a sweetish, milky center and are sold in markets as a kind of snack food but, after several weeks, they harden and develop a faint amber hue that is very similar to an elephant’s tusk. Because of this distinctive color and its density, the Tagua Nut is sometimes referred to as “vegetable ivory” and may even be sold as ivory by unethical dealers. It is for this reason that carvers might occasionally leave a bit of identifying shell on their finished work.
 
And what work it is! The most prestigious examples are carved by the Wounaan and the Embera tribes in the Darien Rain Forest. Because they have no electricity, power tools are never used so each nut must be carefully carved by hand. That makes each and every one a truly unique masterpiece. And because they have no access to commercial paints, all their dyes are extracted from local plants. It’s interesting too that the Wounaan and the Embera only carve those birds, animals and fish that they’ve seen. They won’t, for example, attempt a kangaroo or a koala…no matter how adorable the result might be. Unfortunately, theirs is a dying art as these peaceful Indians are now under intense pressure from a deadly combination of hostile neighbors and habitat destruction.
 
Incorporating a Tagua Nut as part of your project can quickly turn a beautiful piece into an outstanding work of art. I always encourage beaders to give free reign to their creativity when designing a necklace around such a carving and to let nothing less than the exotic, enchanting charm of the Rain Forest guide their choice of color, texture and pattern.

Pictured here are exceptional examples of the master carvers skill.