Tagua nut Pendant

Latest Project: A Tagua Nut Pendant

I've just finished this little piece which I'm quite pleased with, not with the photography I hasten to add, my phone does not have the best camera in the world.

For those of you who don't know, Tagua nuts are about 2 inches in diameter but are very irregularly shaped and it is not always easy to get a decent sized piece of nut to carve. They also often have a soft pithy hole in the centre which makes for any kind of uniformity difficult to come by.

Anyway, this piece is a fusion of Maori design and my own thoughts. It signifies the coming together of two figures, (I'd like to think of them as being male and female but that's only because my own preferences are in that direction) to form one heart. The Maori part is that the overall shape is known as a Pikora or twist and signifies eternity. So basically the overall idea behind the piece is two people coming together in love for all eternity, (slushy or what).

Once the pendant is hanging around someones neck and is held and fiddled with it will absorb the natural oils from their skin and will darken in colour and gain a patina all of it's own. The Maori believe that as the carver works on a piece it absorbs some of his creative essence and later, when it is then worn, it becomes part of the wearer by taking on their spiritual essence.

This isn't the first time that I've carved Tagua nut and certainly won't be the last but I have just acquired some small samples of Corian (fake stone made of a kind of really hardwearing plastic) and I'll be trying that out for carving next. From what I've seen it's possible to create some lovely things with it.

The two photos below show the pendant which is a little more than one inch or 25mm high. The first photo is of it the right way up and the second shows the hole for the thong which is in the top of the larger of the two figures. 

Addendum: better photos added 04/08/2014

Better photos of this pendant