She told me the material was taqua or vegetable ivory, a fair-trade, sustainable plant matter that is botanically known as the endosperm of the genus Phytelephas, a palm native to Central and South America. Grown and harvested in the rain forest, carved into small statues, buttons, ornaments and jewelry, dyed and polished, this palm ivory reappears in stores like Ten Thousand Villages, where its beauty is enhanced by ideals, by context.
Like the dining room table and the reed basket, tagua is dead plant matter. And lovely and long-lasting in its current state, more durable than my leather chair. Today, there is something delightfully humanitarian in choosing materials derived from plant life rather than animal life.
Material context is altered through time and space, independent of logic. There were centuries in which it was desirable to write on uterine vellum, the processed skin of an unborn ungulate. We would not walk into Office Depot today and ask for a box of dead lamb skins to feed into our laser-jet printers, but we might wander over an aisle or two to fondle a calfskin brief case, inhale its new leather smell, feel its suppleness, check the price tag.
Our critical sensibilities about plant and animal-based materials change over time, and can be influenced by cultural shifts. The Victorians' penchant for sentimental human hairwork jewelry seems slightly ghoulish in 2010. Yet, in Philadelphia, there’s a contemporary artist who makes delicate jewelry from owl pellets, arranging regurgitated mouse and shrew bones into geometric shapes that are not immediately recognizable as animal matter. And in the 90s in Milwaukee, small alewives – those unwanted invaders of Lake Michigan -- were coated with epoxy, sold as trendy brooches.
What triggers the ick factor in our response to biological materials? (Why is a cowry shell necklace prettier than a pin made from a dead minnow?)
I’ll be exploring our reactions to the functional and non-functional employment of biological materials this month, as I research a topic for my next “Plein Air” column in http://www.terrain.org/ due February 1.
Question of the week: leather or pleather in 2010?
