Tagua Chip Necklace in Turquoise, Mustard and Chestnut

• Asymmetrical hand-cut chip shapes
• Dark hand-finished edges on each chip
• Turquoise, mustard and chestnut brown palette
• Tagua button clasp closure

Each chip is hand-cut and hand-dyed from a natural seed, so color, shape and grain vary from piece to piece.

Tagua is the seed of the ivory palm, a tree from Ecuador's coastal and rainforest regions. Once dried, the seed hardens into a dense, ivory-like material that can be cut, sanded and dyed — a quality that made it a widely used substitute for animal ivory in the early twentieth century, when Ecuadorian tagua shipped abroad by the ton for buttons and buckles.

The chips here keep that button-making sensibility visible. Each disc is sliced across the seed to show its natural growth rings, then dyed in saturated color, so no two chips read exactly alike even within the same hue. The uneven edges and dark outer rims are left by the cutting process itself, not smoothed away.

The work still happens in small workshops and cooperatives along Ecuador's coast — cutters and dyers moving through a batch of seed slices by feel and by eye, one chip at a time. Tagua is renewable and biodegradable, and puts income directly into those communities.

• Technique: Tagua carving

Wipe clean with a soft, dry cloth. Keep away from water and prolonged moisture.