subject: Get Creative And Artistic With Fine Art Tagua Jewelry [print this page] Tagua jewelry is among the finest of handmade jewelries, which is popular in many parts of the world. As the name suggest, it is made from Tagua nuts and beads extracted from the Tagua palm tree found in the Amazon in South America. They are popularly also known as vegetable ivory or palm ivory, as they look quite similar to ivory beans extracted from the elephant tusk. The Tagua beads and nuts are largely used in making designer Tagua jewelry and decorative material for homes. There are more than fifty thousand people employed in the Tagua collection and processing. All of them are in South America, mostly in Ecuador and Colombia which is considered most favorable for Tagua.
Ecuador is one of the best places to buy original Tagua beads and other products. Otavalo market in Ecuador is famous for world class Tagua products that are hand crafted by local Tagua artists. You can find some very nice Tagua pendants, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, beads and other accessories. Tagua jewelry is among the favorite fashion accessories for women; it is lightweight and can match with different kinds of clothing.
All modern day fashion attires for women have an ideal match with traditional Tagua jewelries.
The thorny Tagua palm trees are five to six meters tall approximately and take almost 15 years to completely grow and produce fruits. Normally, an average grown Tagua tree produces five to fifteen pods annually, with each pod sized like a grapefruit having up to sixty seeds. After fully grown up pods fall to ground which are collected and dried for the period of six to eight weeks then the seeds are removed. The average size of Tagua nuts is around two inches. Because of the small size of nuts they are crafted in to single piece by combining many small nuts together. The nuts have a brown skin and show vivid patterns. Some Tagua artists peel and polish them in order to obtain marble look. To get the ivory look, their skin is removed completely and to get colors the nuts are dyed.
After their extraction, Tagua beads are drilled and cut into different shapes and sizes.
Tagua is a natural product, a gift of nature much more than ivory used to be since harvesting the tagua does not cause any harm, neither to animals nor the forest.
Also the tagua collecting, processing are fabrication are tagua jewelry and other tagua articles gives a decent livlihood to a large number of families in Ecuador.
The tagua jewelry and other tagua objects as tagua beads, tagua carvings are bought by traders and sold on the international market.
