Today was another day to justify coming all the way here and not just ordering in. Poking around in the far corners of the premises of one of the…if not the…biggest freshwater wholesaler i found a bag of what looked ,at first glance,like a  bag of very spotty and lumpy tahitians.

But they were big. I’ll always look at big so I looked inside and there was also lustre. Big and lustre is good so i hauled the bag to the table for a look and, among the very spotty and pimply drops and weird lumps were enough fairly clean rounds for a necklace. Not clean by any means but shiny and lovely colours and sizes between 15mm and 18mm

Multicoloured and HUGE Tahitian pearls. The surfaces are a bit marked but the lustre and colour and size sort of cover that

This photo catches the colour and lustre best.

Arranged in a necklace with four spares for length

These pearls are undrilled so I’ll drill them carefully into the flaws to minimise the marks.  It’s going to be an amazing necklace for someone.

The funny upshot of my finding these pearls was that three other dealers immediately went off to try to find similar bags and all wanted to check the bag contents once I had finished with it

Today was an equally intense pearl sorting day. Working through bags of great pearls to find the few which are amazingly amazing takes time and concentration. Time I have but I’ve never been super great at concentration.

Some great colours going on here with these elliptical freshwaters

However….the latest natural colour single loose pearls from my favourite supplier were stunning enough to keep me sitting there all day. For the last couple of years or so there has been a dearth of really top quality single natural colour pearls. There were plenty of AAA grade pearls certainly….but few metallics and mostly washed out and pallid peaches. I don’t think I bought any.

Fabulous natural colour metallic rounds

But..as this photo shows…I found a colour and lustre explosion in various sizes of rounds and drops. I have no qualms whatsoever in having cleaned out that particular supplier. They still had some pretty good AAAs. Just not the bestest. Even the supplier was saying ‘ wow…so pretty!’

Pairs. multi natural colours and metallic

And,when,at the end of a very long day I popped into another top supplier’s office to see she hadn’t got anything comparable…well..smug mode