VirtuArte.com

One of the reasons I started VirtuArte was to introduce unique, high quality arts and crafts not widely seen and/or available outside of the locations they are made in to an international clientele. As most of you know I love looking for such items to add to the VirtuArte collection. Over the past year jewelry made from tagua nuts has caught my eye.

Now many of you are probably wondering what a tagua nut is. Well, tagua nuts are the seeds from the fruit pods of the Phytelephas Aequatorialis palm tree. This genus contains six species of palms growing from southern Panama along the Andes to Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. They are commonly known as ivory palms, ivory-nut palms or tagua palms; their scientific name means "plant elephant." The nuts from the Brazilian, Colombian and Ecuadorian species are the ones most widely harvested and used.

The medium-sized palm, reaching up to 60 feet tall, grows quickly and easily in shady, humid places hidden below larger trees. Female palms bear clusters of large, studded, woody pointed brown pods, the size of grapefruits and melons emerging from the palm's trunk. These regenerative pods can be harvested by climbing the tree or collected later once they fall to the forest floor. Each pod contains between 20-25 seeds.

Once the seeds are moved from the fruit pods, they are then dried and removed of several layers of brown outer skin. When harvested early, tagua is a soft fruit resembling the inner fruit of coconut, pulpy and sweet, and can be eaten. When they are harvested later, tagua is white and extremely hard, and has come to be known as "vegetable ivory." Once the nut is about 70% dry it is possible to carve them into intricate arts and crafts, including beads, buttons, figurines and jewelry. The carved pieces can be kept natural or dyed and then polished. Before the invention of plastic, tagua was used to produce large quantities of buttons for the world markets.

The VirtuArte collection contains necklaces, bracelets and brooches made from tagua nuts. Ethnic Pride Marketing and Belart work with artisans in Colombia and The Andean Collection, whose jewelry will soon be available on VirtuArte.com, works with artisans from Ecuador.

View the jewelry from Ethnic Pride Marketing at http://www.virtuarte.com/node/85/products and the jewelry from Belart at http://www.virtuarte.com/node/292/products and think about adding one of these pieces to your own jewelry collection.