- Tagua Staunton Set -
Tagua or Vegetable Ivory is actually a carved palm nut. These nuts are oily and edible when first picked, but after drying they become hard and take on many of the properties of elephant ivory. In Victorian times tagua was used widely as a less expensive substitute for the elephant ivory it resembles. Buttons, jewelry, game pieces, and all manner of small objects which would be made from ivory were made in vegetable ivory as well. In the early 20th century plastics replaced tagua as the low cost ivory substitute, but there has been renewed interest in the material by environmentalists lately. Tagua is the environmentally friendly ivory. It acts more like ivory for the carver than other substances and is especially good for scrimshaw, but what's more it doesn't hurt the trees to harvest. In fact, harvesting and selling vegetable ivory is a way to make money from South American rainforests while preserving the trees themselves. See this informative page for a more in-depth look. The main problem with these nuts is their difficulty to work. To start, they are shaped like small spheres, and they're probably hollow in the middle. You never know where exactly the central void will lie until you cut into it by accident and your piece is ruined. In addition to this, fully-hard tagua is quite a bit harder than elephant ivory and harder than steel for that matter. I've carved tagua successfully with modern dremil tools, myself, but I have no idea how 19th century turners and carvers made such fine pieces with only contemporary tools. Its no wonder that with the advent of plastics the use of tagua took such a decline.
I was fortunate enough to acquire one of the finest 19th century Tagua Staunton Sets I've ever seen (and I've seen four such sets) in red-stained and natural vegetable ivory. Kings 2-2/3", the quality of carving is, in my opinion, comparable to Jaques and Whitty elephant ivory sets of similar size. Pieces are made in 2 or 3 parts except for pawns which are oddly shaped to facilitate their carving from single ivory nuts.
19th Century Vegetable Ivory Staunton Set.
The red king looks on.
Natural ivory forces.
And red.
A box of finely carved tagua.
Kings.
Queens.
Bishops.
Knights. Speaking as someone who's tried carving tagua nuts, the quality of these knight-heads is truly amazing.
Rooks. The frontmost red rook clearly shows the vegetable ivory 'grain' resembling elephant ivory.
A closer look at the king bases reveals the difference in grain. This is not a cross-hatching like elephant ivory, but a more random marbleizing instead.
Watch out, though, especially when round pieces are carved the grain in tagua can seriously resemble animal ivory. See my interesting French Tagua Set for a few more convincing grains.
The pawns in this set are the most odd. Their form is dictated by the shape of the original tagua nuts, which are small, round, and almost certainly hollow. The turners didn't want to risk cutting into the central void inside the nuts, so the pawn bases are much thicker than you see in most Staunton sets.
Presentation shot.
All the king's men... and horses. Kingside pieces are marked like Jaques Staunton sets, but with a circle instead of a crown.
This practice was common before the advent of algebraic chess notation, when it was common to say "king's knight to queen four."
I have a St. George set with similar markings.
The white monarch castles behind his ivory tower.
Red queen and her bishop.
Red king and company.
White queen, with a bit of tagua shell still visible in her coronet.
White minor pieces.
Red knight takes center stage.
A shimmering natural ivory knight.
A wash of sunlight over the ivory.