Tagua Nut

I looked at the price of clean, white mammonth ivory and nearly wept (the same applies to clear amber), so bought some tagua nuts from a reliable timber specialist in Wales.

Of course, being me, I couldn't resist skinning one and cutting it in half to examine its structure, even though I was working on another boxwood piece. The interior suggested a design which I worked up in some sketches and I wanted to practice high gloss polishing, which the nut certainly takes well. It seems to be about the same hardness as boxwood, so would be a little softer than carving ivory. Polished, this piece is very slightly grey in tone, but has a similar appearance to some mutton-fat jades. Whether or not it will take himotoshi (the two holes that make the netsuke wearable as a toggle) without cracking remains to be seen. However, the piece is an experiment to see what the nut will do, so it won't matter if anything happens to it.

One thing not to do with tagua is to soak it with water; that will cause splits. The nut needs to be dried for around seven months after it's picked before it's of a hardness for carving and it's wise to pick out the small gelatinous bit from the stem hole so that the interior (especially if it has fissures, which most nuts do) can dry out evenly. I also keep the skinned material in a plastic bag with ventilation holes when I'm not working on it so it can dry out slowly; unskinned nuts are stored in a plastic bag without ventilation.