Gutta-percha can vary in colour from yellow through brown so dark as to appear black. It can also have other colourants added. It can also be given a wood grain streaky look. It is thermoplastic. Hardeners like zinc oxide can be added, but it can crumble with age in the harder forms. The natural forms like hard leather are quite stable and somewhat flexible...
It was the start of the plastics age we tend to associate with the 2nd half of the 20th c. -but actually started 100 odd years before that. One of its first heavy commercial uses was to insulate transatlantic cable wires in the 1870's. It came ashore in Porthcurno, Cornwall, 224miles south-south-west of where I live.
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