TAGUA IS NOT ONLY USEFUL FOR MAKING BEADED JEWERLY, BUT ALSO IT SAVES ELEPHANTS AND RAIN FORESTS.
-- A Little History About Tagua --
TAGUA ECUADOR also known as Vegetable Ivory, corozo, or Exotic Ivory, is the dried and polished nuts of several South American palms. Tagua is remarkably similar to animal ivory in both looks and feel. Tagua is durable and easily carved, and it even mimics the porosity of animal ivory. The biggest difference: Elephant do not have to die. Evidently those similarities were not lost on early botanists who named the palm genus Phytelephas-"elephant plant." Versatility is only one of Tagua virtues. It is also infinitely renewable. In a single year, a female Tagua tree can produce 20 pounds of tagua nuts - that's about the amount of ivory on an average female elephant. The elephant, however, yields its ivory only once; the tree continues producing nuts year after year. The idea of using palm nuts as type of ersatz ivory is hardly new; it goes back more than 100 years. In 1865, a ship sailing from South America to Germany used a load of Tagua nuts as ballast. When the vessel docked in Hamburg, curious stevedores began playing with the Tagua and noticed its ivory like characteristics. Tagua quickly became one of Ecuador 's leading exports to Europe. Craftsmen used the nuts to fashion handmade decor pieces and souvenir handicrafts, from tagua chess pieces, tagua figures for decoration, to tagua buttons and tagua umbrella handles. In the early part of this century, Colombia and Ecuador were exporting some 40,000 tons of the material annually to the United States and Europe. After the World War II, competition from an inexpensive new synthetic called plastic wipes out the Tagua trade. Now that the world is waking up to the growing environmental problems which face our planet today and that environmental concerns are getting higher on the world's agenda that ever before, the use of Tagua is getting renewed. Commerce in vegetable ivory decor is helping foster respect for Rain Forests in Ecuador, and it is doing so through the nondestructive exploitation of a renewable resource.
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