Vegetable ivory
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Description
The hard, cream-colored seed of the any of several palm trees. Vegetable ivory resembles true ivory in appearance and hardness, but it has a fibrous microscopic structure. Ivory nuts were used for small carved items, buttons, dice, knife handles, cane heads, and Japanese netsuke. They accept dyes readily and can be polished to a glossy luster. Some of the vegetable ivory palms are:
- Ivory nut - Phytelephas macrocarpa, found in Colombia and Ecuador
- Doum palm nuts - Hyphaene thebaica, found in Africa
- tagua palm nuts - Phytelephas euqatorialis, found in South America
- apple nuts - Metroxylon amicarum, found in the South Pacific
Synonyms and Related Terms
ivory nut; doom palm nut; gingerbread palm nut; apple nut; tagua nut; dom nut
Physical and Chemical Properties
- Color = white but may be dyed any color
- May be dyed any color, but dyeing may show grain or may not penetrate deeple
- Birefringence = none
- Pleochroism = none
- Fluorescence = variable
- Inclusions = parallel torpedo-shape cells that appear round in cross-section
| Mohs Hardness | 2.5 |
|---|---|
| Density | 1.38 - 1.42 g/ml |
| Refractive index | 1.54 |
Resources and Citations
- J.Thornton,"The Structure of Ivory and Ivory Substitutes", AIC Preprints, Philadelphia, 1981, p.173-181.
- Gem Identification Lab Manual, Gemological Institute of America, 2016.
- G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 424
- Wikipedia: Vegetable Ivory Accessed Dec 2022
- Hermann Kuhn, Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art and Antiquities, Butterworths, London, 1986
- Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997
- The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998