Environmentally Friendly Ivory Jewelry

Tagua nuts are commonly referred to as “vegetable ivory”.  The hard nut can be carved into various shapes such as these gorgeous blue unity earrings shown in the picture on the left.  These gorgeous earrings are colored with plant based dyes and hand carved.  The artisans in Ecuador are trained to make these high quality products from the sustainable resource of the tagua nuts.  This leads to the people being dependent on the harvesting of the trees.  Suddenly, the preservation of the rainforest is now as financially important to them as it is to worldwide environmentalists.

The earrings are called unity earrings to represent the unity of the people worldwide and the planet on which we live.  These eco-friendly jewelry pieces are available through a website called One World Projects that strives to be more than just fair trade.  They want to develop long term relationships based on mutual respect with artisans in over 80 countries that they work within.  A portion of the proceeds from the sales go directly back into the community to be reinvested with the artisans or through economic development programs within the area.  They promote self determination while marketing products that are both socially and environmentally responsible.

They have a huge range of jewelry made from tagua nuts including the unity necklace to match with the earrings.  It comes in ten different colors so there’s definitely no shortage of options.  My favorite piece of vegetable ivory available on the site though absolutely has to be the tagua nut infinity symbol pendant.  I have a memorial necklace that I wear everyday that is an infinity symbol so that probably explains my endearment for it.

This necklace uses an entire nut carved out with a 3-D infinity symbol.  The artisan has left the natural brown of the skin of the nut on the exterior of the carving that really helps to define the symmetry of the shape.  It really shows off both of the colors of this Amazon rainforest seednut to their true beauty.  I can’t even begin to imagine the skill and patience that a carving such as this would entail.  Absolutely gorgeous!!  And the price of $15 is incredibly low.  In fact for $36USD, you could buy all 3 of the vegetable ivory pieces featured in this post!  This is certainly a budget saving earth saver.  I’m certain that I’ll be revisiting this site in future posts and online shopping trips.