Material Matters: TORTOISESHELL

With its attractive marbling and warm translucency, tortoiseshell has been a popular material for jewellery and household objects for thousands of years. The fact that, under heat, it becomes easily malleable into fluid shapes has only added to its desirability. But what exactly is tortoiseshell?

The material comes from the carapace – the hard upper shell – of one of the marine turtle species, and almost always from the (now critically endangered) hawksbill turtle. Its usage goes back at least as far as the Ancient Greeks, who often used an entire tortoise or