Tagua, Wounaan

Tagua, (tah-gwa), also called ivory nut or vegetable ivory, is the seed of several kinds of palms that grow in tropical rainforests. The durability of tagua and its similiarity to animal ivory has been known for a long time. Before tagua was displaced by plastics in the 1930's tropical countries exported large quantities of tagua to the U.S. and Europe for making buttons and jewelry.

Unlike products made from animal ivory, tagua products help conserve rare and endangered species by providing an incentive to protect rainforest habitat. Most tropical deforestation is the result of hardworking rural people seeking income by converting the rainforest into low quality crop land and cattle pasture. As they rapidly deplete the poor tropical soil, the small scale farmers sell their land to large-scale ranchers, and move to new forests in a process of hardship for their families and ruin for the tropical environment. By producing a sustainable income from the intact rainforest, tagua and other natural forest products can provide both stability for rural people and an alternative to rainforest destruction.The Wounaan Indians are master artisans from the Darién-Chocó region of Panamá. They are known for their fine baskets and high quality wood carvings. In addition to crafting objects for sale, skilled wood carving has many traditional uses in the Wounaan culture, including fabricating hunting weapons, canoe, paddles, household furnishings, and ceremonial objects. Pioneered by Selerino Cheucarama, one of the best master carvers, the Wounaan have recently extended their carving skills to tagua and have created a unique and imaginative art inspired by the plants and animals of the rainforest.The Wounaan artisans care the tagua with hand tools and polish the tagua with a series of fine abrasives; no varnishes or lacquers are used. The natural color or tagua is ivory white with a dark brown skin. Natural inclusions are shades of brown and gray. Other colors are produced by dying the tagua with natural extracts of plants and earth, using the traditional methods for dying basket fibers. Only high quality India inks are used on those pieces with inked details.

More Information about Tagua

· When mature, tagua nuts fall to the forest floor, where they are harvested by hand. The parent trees are not harmed in any way.
· Most tagua comes from palm trees in the genera phytelephas and Palandra.
· A common tagua palm in Panama is Phytelephas seemanii, which produces an exceptionally hard variety of tagua.
· Tagua palms grow in the shade of other rainforest trees and in open wet areas.
· Before WWII, Panamá, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil exported approximately 5 million dollars worth of tagua per year to the US and Europe. Panamá enjoyed a “tagua boom” between 1900 and 1940.
· In the 1920’s, 20% of all the buttons produced in the US were made of tagua.
Small factories in Ecuador still do a thriving business manufacturing tagua buttons for European and Japanese fashion designers.

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