What Is Scrimshaw?
What Tools are needed?
How do you color it?
Isn't ivory illegal?
Tagua Nut FAQ's
What plant does this come from?
Where does it grow?
What is it made of?
Is it edible?
What's the history of the use of the Tagua Nut?

Scrimshaw is the art of etching a picture onto whale bone, ivory or other hard substance, and filling in the etching with ink to bring out the picture. Though the origin of the name is uncertain, we know it has been practiced since revolutionary times. It is the indigenous art form of the American Whaleman, who, in his idle hours cruising for whales, devoted himself to fashioning articles and jewelry from the scrap teeth and bone onboard. It didn't receive widespread recognition until President John F. Kennedy, an enthusiastic collector, brought scrimshaw to the public eye.

Tools Used

The whalemen would use their knives, needles, or other tools as scribes to "scrim" onto the whale bone. Today, special scribes made of tungsten carbide, and even high speed (dental) drills and (in industrial manufacture of scrimshaw) lasers are employed.

Coloring the scrimshanded piece depends on the material you use as a base. Ivory, teeth (don't use your own unless they're already out of your mouth!), and plastics can be covered completely with ink, and when dry, the ink on the surface can be rubbed off, leaving the ink in the etched areas. Softer or porous materials must be handled by different techniques to prevent staining. Some of the best ink for coloring scrimshaw is Dr. Ph. Martin's Bombay India Inks They come in a variety of colors, or you can get the basic cyan, magenta, yellow and black and mix your own custom colors.

 by using a "brush pen" - these pens have India ink inside them and a flexible brush-like "nib" that allows precise placement of the ink. You can get a Basic Colors Set of 6, a set of 24 Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens, or others.  There are many color sets available, such as Manga, landscape, classic - or you can pick your own colors.

Some ivory is legal to buy and sell - see CITES Treaty for more information.

We currently work on fossilized ivory, as well as piano key (recycled) ivory, and tagua nut. Plastics neither carve well, nor is it biodegradable.

Tagua Nut
The Botanical name: Phytelephas Macrocarpa Palmae.
Also known as:
Corozo (Corrozzo) Nut: (British)
Binroji Nut: (Japanese)
Steinnuss: (German)
Pullipunta: (Peru)
but is most often referred to as "Tagua Nut".

Habitat

Southern Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru, Colombia being the most prominent exporter so far.

The Tagua Nut comes from a palm like tree which grows to a height of 20 to 30 feet in several tropical regions of South America. The nut ranges in size from a cherry to a tennis ball, with an average about the size of a walnut.

Characteristics

Chemical

Dried tagua nuts are pure cellulose. Before the nut matures, they have a milky sweet liquid in the center composed mainly of manose sugar; and, when first harvested, are edible. When ripe, the nuts fall to the ground and are gathered and dried (often in huts) from four to eight weeks, after which they become extremely hard. The nut is nontoxic.

Physical

The ivory nut is close grained and very hard. The cellular structure and grain is similar to that of elephant ivory. It often resembles fine ivory in texture and color, and is slightly softer than mammal ivory. The nuts usually contain a void in the center of the nut, often in the shape of a "T".

Color

The color varies from blueish-white to amber with most nuts ivory-amber. Variations within the nut are not uncommon.

History

For over two hundred years vegetable ivory has been used by ivory carvers in the making of netsukes, dice, dominoes, chess pieces, cane and umbrella handles, pipes, mahjongg tiles, sewing needle cases and the fine art of scrimshaw. In the late eighteen hundreds up through World War II this ivory nut was used to make some of the finest buttons in the clothing industry.

Its similarity to elephant ivory has been known by craftsman for years and is frequently passed as elephant ivory on objects fashioned from it and can be very deceptive. It being so much like mammal ivory that pieces carved from it are sold at the same price as elephant ivory.

For close to eighty years the ivory nut was a commodity of global importance and factories on three continents used to manufacture articles of utility and luxury. Celluloid and then plastics overtook the need for the world ivory nut market after the early forties.

The vegetable ivory nut has begun a comeback because of the slaughter and near extinction of mammal ivory, e.g., elephant, whales, walrus and other species.  See taguanut.com for some examples.

Any questions, please email me.