How do You Make Eco Friendly Jewellery with Vegetable Ivory or Tagua?
Tagua fruit is what has provided Pretty Pink with our uniqueness and originality, which is also widely known as Vegetable Ivory, due to its almost identical composition, hardness and colour to animal ivory.
The exotic fruit from the tropical forests is one of the most beautiful samples of South American nature.
It takes several months for the tagua to become the ‘jewel’ that we know and love. These large tropical fruits grow on palm trees in large clumps and fall off the tree when ripe.
Inside each of them we find several nuts of different sizes, which are full of sweet liquid flesh. These are dried for around three months before they can be processed. Once dry the kernels harden to stone.
The tagua fruit is harvested from the forest floor by the indigenous inhabitants, respecting and un-harming mother nature. The entire process is both sustainable and ethical.
When the kernels become stones, the tagua is hand cut and processed into the required shapes and colours using ethical and sustainable fabric dyes.
Each of Pretty Pink’s eco-jewellery pieces are unique, thanks to this beautiful, natural material, each handcrafted piece of jewellery can vary in size, shape and colour.
Thanks to tagua’s organic nature, we proudly help both people and nature.
What Makes Tagua Sustainable and Why Does Pretty Pink Eco-Jewellery Use it?
Harvesting Tagua Does Not Hurt The Trees
- The tagua fruit naturally falls to the ground when ripe
- We take only as much material from nature as it offers us
Support for Sustainable Tagua and Pretty Pink is Support for Forests
- Indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest originally made their living by felling the forest on arable land
- When Tagua became their source of living, they began to protect their nature again as a sustainable source of income
Pretty Pink is Fair Trade
- Fair trade provides a fair income for the indigenous people involved in the production of Pretty Pink Eco-Jewellery.
We Support Local Communities We Collaborate With
- We provide job opportunities for specific Colombian families
- Tagua was used in the past to make buttons, after World War ll, plastic materials were imported from China displacing the natural materials
- Thanks to Pretty Pink Eco-Jewellery and other similar businesses, locals can now re-engage in their historic craft
Where Can You Buy Tagua in The UK?
Pretty Pink Jewellery is a leader in Scotland and across the UK for Tagua trade and materials. We have refined both our South American connections with the raw Tagua product as well as honed our craft of designing with and perfecting the use of tagua in fine jewellery.