TAGUA, VEGETAL IVORY - GENERALITIES PART 1 OF 3 -
fverac September 24th, 2007
Tagua or vegetal ivory is the dry fruit of a species of own palm of the equatorial tropic (South America), that reaches a height from 20 to 30 feet, whose botanical name is: Phytelephas Macrocarpa Palmae. This dry fruit has the size of a nut of 40 centimeters of diameter approximately, whose color varies from bluish to amber and hangs in a palm similar to which they produce coconuts. It has different sizes and forms, thus we have small, medium and great with weights from 1,6 or 2 ounces small sizes until of the 2,4 or 3 ounces greatest. Tagua is one jewel of the nature that to the being processed into the hands of capable craftsmen is used in a huge number of applications obtaining forms and designs with quality of export.
It grows in wild form in forests called taguales. Tagua, Corozo or Vegetal ivory, is the cellulose almond complex of the seed of Phytelephas of white color, eburnian, hard, heavy, smooth and opaque that acquires shine when is polished, odorless, insipid; but it is not elastic nor incorruptible like true ivory.
The commercialization of tagua in Ecuador began around year 1865 with a first shipment to Germany, where the use of this product in the manufacture of buttons of high quality for clothes of high seam had been discovered.The powerful “German Tagua House”. exclusive supplier for Europe and the rest of the world for over 50 years, discovered in America a great source of tagua. This findings induced it to establish storing centers along of the Ecuadorian coasts, from where the material was transported on board of merchant sailboats which sailed from Ecuador through Straits of Magallanes, advancing by the African coasts and finally to disembark in Hamburg.
The discovery of the Germans around the exuberant mine of Ecuadorian tagua was a secret carefully kept during all these years, giving like result a period of monopoly, given the mistaken belief that vegetal ivory had the same origin of ivory animal: Africa.
