Category Archives: Pearlescencery

What’s happening in the workshop

Kintsugi: golden joinery…golden repair

We’ve done a slow, under-the-radar sort of launch for our Kintsugi collection of repaired ‘broken pearls’ but now is the time to tell all.

Maybe three years ago I was at a Hong Kong Gem Show and discovered the existence of broken pearls after finding a bag of all sorts of non-mainstream pearls at the back of a tiny stall featuring a mix of different sea pearls.

Gold, white and blue South Sea ‘broken’ pearls. Great colour and lustre.

Intrigued, I sat down and started to go through the bag (it had well over a thousand pearls in it). There were tiny little round gold and white and pink, and blue and green south sea pearls, no bigger than 6mm. there were various keishi and there were these weird big and small pearls with missing nacre, some with huge holes in them, so you could see the nucleus, or the hole was full of concholin, layer on layer showing like the rings in a tree, or the pearl was hollow. No nucleus no anything. Just a nacre shell and a big hole. They were fascinating. The sort of pearls – lumps of nacre really – which shouted ‘take me home and let loose your imagination’. So of course I did.

Mostly large and gold South Sea pearls.

The bag of mixed pearls, all south sea of various colours, sat on my workbench for months. Periodically I tipped them out and looked at them. They looked right back at me.

Then I went to Bangkok and found a supplier of gold leaf (in Buddhist temples – as a way of offering – you buy a tiny ‘page’ and apply it to a statue). Again, I was intrigued and bought some. I had a vague idea that I would apply some to a statue at home and that would be a nice thing to do.

I never got around to doing that. The leaves of gold leaf sat on my workbench. The bag of broken pearls sat on my workbench. I had an ‘ahhhhh’ moment and the Kintsugi collection was a glint in my eye. No more than that as I had no idea how to fix the gold leaf to the pearls. I had bought some size, the traditional glue for gold leaf. It’s a treacly goo. I tried that. Total disaster. The inside of one hollow pearl became a mud mix of gold and goo which never dried. Finally I worked out how to apply the gold leaf, how to make it adhere and how to seal it.

kintsugi collection gold south sea pearls earrings

Big gold South Sea half pearls with thick gold leaf to the front.

On the way I’ve got much better at handling the gold leaf, which is so fine and light it will waft off and fly around if you so much as breathe on it. There’s times when, unknowingly, I’ve walked around with a gold tip to my nose. Whenever I’ve worked on it I certainly get gold fingers and gold fingernails.

kintsugi collection gold south sea pearls bracelet

A Kintsugi Collection unique bracelet of gold South Sea pears and vermeil

The collection was called the broken collection (no…), the gold leaf collection (a bit of a jam pot label name) until a website reader said that the technique reminded her of the Japanese art of Kintsugi. What was Kintsugi (isn’t google wonderful!) We had a name. Perfect.

kintsugi collection gold south sea pearls necklace

Necklace of gold South Sea pearls, these were mostly hollow.

So now, after much experimentation, perspiration and fun in the designing and making, the collection is here.

Lavish gold leaf on this gold South Sea pearl. Sometimes you look at the pearl and wonder..what happened here?

More sustainable and environmentally friendly packaging

Our new packaging. Light card and printed ribbon.

One of the few good things about the whole covid thing has been that there has been a little time for reflection outside the hurly-burly pressure of the everyday routine.

Once we here had adapted to the interregnum of being confined to homes (basically everyone stayed home except me and I went back to the early days and did everything!) I did have time to think about some aspects of how we do things. Stay with me and (I hope) follow my thinking.

It’s very clear that decimating flying has had a positive effect on the environment. At the same time it is our proud boast that I select every single pearl we offer for sale. That’s me, in person, with my own eyes and hands, going through a wholesaler’s stock and selecting, in person, every single pearl. It is one of the things which I am most proud. No remote buying, no relying on others and certainly no remote drop-shipping while pretending to stock and ship everything.

But that core business-model means I have to sometimes move my eyes and hands, and the rest of me to where the pearl wholesalers are. That’s in the Far East. Mostly in Hong Kong, but also Thailand. (plus I have been trips-of-a-lifetime fortunate to visit actual pearl farms in Indonesia and Vietnam)

The whole flying-is-evil thing had me feeling kinda guilty, even though I could not see a way around having to…fly.

Lighter ‘pillow’ boxes from now on.

However I can act to reduce the total Pearlescence air miles/aviation fuel impact by reducing the weight of our packaging. Which I have now done. We have switched from recyclable cardboard boxes – very, very nice boxes. But substantial and with a certain weightiness. To light card pillow boxes. We still add our unique printed ribbon so there is a certain something to untying the bow and opening the box but the total weight of every shipment of finished jewellery will be reduced by two thirds. Over a year I reckon that is more than enough to allow me to travel to buy new pearls and metal.

Especially when you consider that even much of our domestic shipping is now moved by air. Pillow boxes also save on shipping from where they are manufactured to the wholesaler, which in our case is in Ireland (so there’s another aviation saving when they are shipped to us) warehouse and our premises space is also massively saved.

opened pillow box

Also, because every one of our packages of finished pieces will be smaller and lighter we will save overall on shipping costs for every single item we ship to you, where ever you are in the world. If that is indeed overseas, well, that’s doing a joint little bit to save the planet.

An added bonus for the majority of our customers is that this new packaging removes residual guilt about throwing away a box. It’s fully cardboard so pull off the ribbon (which can find a new use I’m sure) and throw it into the recycle bin with a clear conscience. We’ll be including a chiffon sleeper bag so you can still have something – in fact a better thing – to keep your pearls in.

Since I am being totally transparent here, switching to pillows will also save us money, money which we can swing back to you all by not having to increase prices due to the collapse in value of the £ sterling over the last couple of years and the increases in shipping costs

Sustainability is something we all have to strive for. With this move to sustainable packaging if you feel that you absolutely must have an older style presentation box they will be available for a small extra charge to cover the extra cost of the box, the larger wrapping and the increased shipping cost.

Natural white pearls

Everyone tends to think that white pearls are the only pearls: but of course everyone is wrong. White pearls are pretty much the exception rather than the rule.

Very unusual – rare even – all natural white pearls

Which is why this photo is something a bit special. All these pearls are naturally white pearls. Reading top to bottom there is my strand of natural white freshwaters, then a strand of naturally white akoyas, then naturally white south sea pearls, then naturally white tahitians.

The freshwaters have a faint gold blush, the akoyas have a touch of grey, the south sea are creamy rose and, as you can see the Tahitians have a silvery grey cast.

I’m glad I managed to grab this photo – the Tahitians have already continued their journey onwards and when I found them in September in Hong Kong it was only the second white Tahitian strand I’d ever seen.

Natural whites – as opposed to bleached white pearls – are the exception. The only other naturally white nacreous pearls I can think of are Margaritifera margaritifera super rare UK river pearls and the native pearls of parts of the US – around the Mississippi for example.

We have naturally white strands available still in Freshwater, akoya and South Sea Pearls. Click ‘Shop at Pearlescence’ above to see our stock

Where have all the gold freshwater round pearls gone..? (Or… why I go to Hong Kong twice a year)

A regular customer recently asked me for a pair of gold round freshwater studs, size around 8m. That sounded pretty straightforward, as I replied. Then I went to look in our stock. Not a single gold, either round or button. She even, and very helpfully, sent me an image of the colour

Helpful – much easier to see the colour than to try to describe in words

Where had they gone? Now I know that I tended to buy the more lavender end of the colour range in naturally coloured freshwater pearls. Indeed these were the hard to find ones in a sea of peach, apricot and -frankly – orange up to maybe about three or four years ago. But I would have seen and selected a few really good gold pairs….wouldn’t I? Well apparently not. None in rounds and none in buttons from 7mm to 10mm.

After a rather apologetic email to the client I contacted a couple of reliable wholesalers in Hong Kong to see what they had. Surely they would have plenty. Gold was a really common colour for natural pearls!

Umm, the really big wholesaler had nothing even like in rounds or buttons. The second, family firm, had seven in total out of a huge litre box full of AAA rounds. My contact sent me a photo of them in her hand and said she could make three pairs.

Here they are:You can see that only the top pair is remotely gold. It’s too pale though and one pearl is larger than the other (by 0.4mm)

The middle pair is a reasonable colour match but peach and one pearl is larger than the other. The bottom pair doesn’t match at all in colour or size.

[#sigh]

None of these fits the brief and I would not have selected any of them to show the client. I will probably keep the top pair, they are a nice vanilla colour, but the other two pairs will be making their return with me. And ask the client to wait, if she can bear it, for me to look in Hong Kong.

So, this is a cheery little anecdote about trying to find a specific colour of pearl for a client. Yes. But it also shows very clearly indeed why I insist on selecting every single pearl (and finding) we offer, either as loose pearls or finished pearl jewellery myself, with my own two eyes, in person.

First glimpse of new Akoya strands -waves

Very quick post to bring you early photos of some new akoya strands. These are natural colours (no dyes or bleaching) 2.5mm to 4.5mm super-shiny akoyas arranged in waves (hence their name) along the 85cm length. Colour variations are golds, creamy white and mixed (golds, creams, blues). Contact me for privilege purchase access

Feast your pearl loving eyes on these…

or these, the mixed colours..You can see the waves of large/small running along the strand

Beautiful

Single strand of creamier coloured pearls

Pearlescence in Retail Jeweller magazine

I only just caught up with this piece which I wrote for the UK trade magazine Retail Jeweller earlier this year about the big pearl adventure to the pearl farm on Talesei island, Indonesia this spring (see a lot of blog about it)

Page from Retail Jeweller

Harvesting South Sea Pearls: Working on a pearl farm in Indonesia

What do you say when a pearl company asks if you want to help with harvesting south sea pearls on their farm in Indonesia? You say ‘yes please’ and ‘when?’ and immediately buy plane tickets. Well, Betty Sue King and I did, anyway. Let me take you with us on an amazing adventure where we worked hard and learned so much (…and were wet a lot of the time).

The adventure starts

Our adventure started very early in the morning with a taxi ride to Hong Kong airport to fly to Jakarta and then Manado airports in Indonesia. The next day we set off to the farm itself, on an island to the north of Sulawesi. A car ride through twisty country roads where, if a dog, piglet or human felt like walking in the middle of the road or have a bit of a sleep in the sun, well, the car went round them. As a UK driver I was …. arghhhhh…but it all seemed to work out somehow. Then, after a short wait, a tiny wooden boat appeared which was to be our ride to the farm. Again, thoughts of health and safety were quickly squashed. Everyone local seemed perfectly happy with the boat so..

Happily the sea was smooth and the trip uneventful, as Betty Sue and I pinched ourselves. We’d been excited about this trip for months and now, here we were. Our eyes strained for our first glimpse of the farm as we skirted numerous small islands, all covered in dense green lush trees and with the occasional village on the shore. Finally we were there.

Our first glimpse of the farm

(How to scramble off the boat with some semblance of dignity and along the dock – slippery and wet, without falling back into the sea?) (especially the short section which was just three planks)

Three planks of slippery doom. By the end of our stay I had enough confidence to gulp quietly to myself then stride confidently along them

Our host, Dev, shows us round, from one end of the farm to the other – there’s a hatchery, the harvest has started, there are baskets, floats,nets piled everywhere, men being purposeful at their tasks, and finally we are shown the first pearls harvested, that very day.

The first day’s pearl harvest. Note the tags in each basket which show who nucleated the oysters and other details of their history. Note also me remembering my reporter roots and writing it all down!

The farm has four technicians who split grafting duties – two from Japan, who are the farm manager Hiroshi and his deputy Kudo and two local girls still being trained (who will have a worldwide transferable skill)

The main problem with training, indeed with any innovation or change in technique, in grafting with south sea pearls is that the time between carrying out the operation and the harvest, when you find out if the idea is good or the technique is sound is 18 month. Every technician takes copious notes of what they have done all the time, but it is a long time to wait..

This farm is doing a lot right though, because the survival rate from graft to harvest is 80%. Grafting is done when the oysters are around 7-8cm in size and around 10 months old.

First thing on our first full day on the farm we visited the hatchery. The farm raises its own baby oysters from eggs and sperm. They’re cared for and cosseted in a controlled environment with great food and no predators. Even at microscopic size they are recognisable as oysters – you can’t see anything when they are few days old except with a microscope.

Here’s the little baby oysters, just a few days old, only visible under magnification

The hatchery tanks. farm manager Hiroshi to the right

The water looks quite clear but there are many thousands of tiny little baby oysters happily swimming around

breakfast and dinner for hungry growing baby oysters

Baby oysters start their life in the ocean attached to these plaited ropes, tucked safely in rectangular cages like squared off lobster pots.

The plaited ropes for the little spats.

After visiting the hatchery we were put right to work. Out over the sea is a rectangular room where the harvest is done. The skiffs bring the baskets with the oysters right to the door, the oysters are removed from the baskets and the oysters opened. Then the flesh is scraped off into a bowl (yes, harvesting is brutal, there is no way around this) and when the bowl is full..that is where Betty Sue and I came in. Twice a day the whole room is washed down and cleaned.

We were placed at a small table with three bowls. One full of oyster bodies, one for pearls and one for the harvested bodies.

Getting started with learning how to harvest the pearls.

A brief lesson in where and how to look and feel for the pearls and we were away.

With this oyster not only is the pearl within easy to feel but it is visible.

At first we were, of course, hopelessly slow. I was concerned that I would miss a precious pearl – some oysters manage to discard their nucleus even after they are x-rayed. But practice made much nearer to perfect, especially encouraged when I found a series of tiny keishi, some no bigger than 1mm. Most of the keishi are in or right by the pearl sac and simply pop out at the same time, but some are hidden in the body of the oyster or around its mantle. These are, to all intents wild or natural pearls, even though CIBJO says they are cultured. (mostly I suspect because it would be next to impossible to verify provenance successfully and credibly)

A beautiful gold drop

It’s not a bit glamorous. Your feet are wet the whole time as the floor is continuously washed down and the oyster goo gets everywhere (however we both noticed it had a wonderful effect on the skin on our hands – beautifully smoothed and not wrinkled) Some pearls are easy to find, while others hide away deep in the body.

Neither of us could resist studying each and every pearl as it appeared in our hand, and I noticed that even the fastest and most experienced harvesters also looked carefully at each pearl before dropping it into the bowl to be quickly washed and then whisked off to be cleaned and sorted. There were pearls of all shapes and sizes, rounds, near rounds and drops, circles, deep and pale golds, champagne pearls and whites, up to 12mm and down to 1mm. I would have been very happy to bring every single one home with me. Each one was beautiful.

Random scoop from the harvest bowl. Every single one beautiful

Pile of opened shells, and a bowl of oysters about to be delivered to our table. It took quite a bit of strength and some incredibly fierce knives to open the shells.

I never got used to feeling one of these shrimps in the oyster bowl. The shrimps live in and around the oyster nets and every so often one would be in the bowl. I couldn’t help squealing like a baby when I felt it wriggle against my fingers, much to everyone’s amusement. I must have very sensitively tuned scaredy dangerous shrimp reflexes is all I can say

Oyster with accompanying shrimp

The adductor muscle – the meat of the oyster – is collected at the end of the day from all the oysters and is sold on as meat. We had some several times at the farm – delicious and you couldn’t really get fresher!

Last task of the day is collecting the delicious adductor muscle meat

Very little is wasted. The shells go for mother of pearl or are polished and sold.

These little shells are about six months old

Unpolished shell from the inside. This is a white shell

Unpolished shell from the outside

This shell has lots of gold. Polished

This shell is all white

Remember that the colour of the shell is no guide to the colour of the pearl though. The colour of the pearl is solely dependent on the colour genetically coded into the donor mantle tissue. To grow each pearl a nucleus is inserted into the gonad of the oyster when it has grown large enough. Between 18 and 20months at this farm.

6mm nucleus beads ready for grafting

It is a delicate operation. The nucleus bead and tiny sliver of mantle tissue need to be placed just exactly so, so that they are not rejected and the graft tissue does not die (a few un-nacred nucleus came out where the tissue had died). A couple of weeks later all the oysters will be x-rayed to check that the insert has been successful. Any where the oyster has managed to reject the nucleus (and who can blame them really?) will be rested and re-nucleated in due course). Pearls tend to grow larger in gold shells and smaller in white shells, although this is not a fixed and absolute rule.This farm uses a 6mm bead for nucleating. While the farm has tried second grafts they have found that they are not very effective against the extra time needed for harvesting so usually make only one harvest.

When they are little babies the oysters live on plaited ropes in protective baskets. Then they graduate to individual spaces on hanging flat pouch baskets – first eight then six to a basket.

you can see the two sizes of flat pouch baskets for the grafted oysters, six on the left and eight on the right.

The baskets are covered with nets to protect the oysters. The nets are changed every three months when all the encrustations are removed. Betty Sue and I went out in the skiff to help with this the day after the end of the harvest. We held the clean new bags open for the farm workers to slide the baskets in. Even though it was only 9am and I had applied factor 40 when the sun came out I could feel my skin starting to burn – factor 50 applied. Kudo was so worried about my anglo-saxon winter white skin he came and got us after about an hour. I wanted to stay out but he was right.

clear view of actual oyster body. The gonads, where the pearl is, is bottom right.

Both male and female oysters are grown. Theoretically male oysters grow larger and better pearls because the female oysters have eggs in the gonad taking up space. At one time the eggs would be removed but that left a void and the nucleus often moved. We never noticed that gender made a big difference to the pearl. Certainly size of oyster was not related to size of pearl. sometimes the biggest oysters produced small pearls, and the smaller oysters produced big ones.

Female on the left, male to the right

At the farm the pearls are simply washed in rotating barrels to remove the oyster goo, then sorted and put into lots for auction. I have brought back a few pearls which I can guarantee have had no treatment whatsoever apart from this brief wash

These barrels fit onto a rotating spindle. As you can see..water and another barrel with a pinch of soap is all the treatment they get

I picked out these keishi for myself

south sea keishi

and these few pearls will be available in due course. For those pearl lovers who want pearls with no treatments – I can guarantee that these have had nothing apart from a quick wash to remove oyster goo.

Gold south sea pearls. guaranteed untreated

During sorting careful note is made of who nucleated which batch and when in an attempt to work out successes and failures

one lot of nucleation from one day. Plenty of rounds but a real mix of colours and sizes

One example of this careful tracking . Betty Sue and I were given the honour of harvesting a special lot of oysters which had been grafted with akoya pearls as an experiment. Sadly the pearls were largely unremarkable and mostly not as high quality as the regularly nucleated ones. There was some discussion about trying freshwater pearls.

The harvest lasted three days. We spent most of the time in the harvesting room, but were also allowed out on the boats to see the baskets hauled up for harvest and then to help put new nets on the baskets once the harvest was over. During the three days 15,636 pearls were harvested, with an average size of 11mm (excluding keishi from the calculation)

Huge and lifelong thanks to Devchand Chodhry, Hiroshi Imaizumi and Shigekazu Kudo and all the staff on the farm for their patience as I blundered around trying to join in everything and, I am sure, getting in the way of their skilled work.

Hong Kong, spring 2018

Prices for round Edison pearls have dropped massively – they are now about a third of what they were last year, due mostly to over-production, coupled with a slowing of demand. Oddly the price of Edison drops has gone up. At the same time I picked up more rumours and some confirmation that very dark Edisons are indeed prone to colour fading.

Natural colour Edison round pearls size 11-12mm

This has been going around for about six months now and I was told that some Edisons have faded by firstly a seller and then by someone within Grace Pearl. This is happening possibly, I was told, because Grace are pushing the processing and treating the pearls too quickly and heavily, which is damaging their colour durability.

Bigger colour metallic round Edison pearls 14-15mm.
Nice!

It may well be, however, that they are learning and backing off on these treatments and durability will therefore improve. Time will tell. Only the natural dark purple shades are apparently involved, not the pale ones, or whites, or ripples. Anyhow, I matched up some pairs of nice big natural colour rounds and some really clean round whites.

White 11-12mm round metallic Edison pearls

So..what else was a good find this time? How about this stunning strand of 9mm to 10.6 multicoloured metallic Tahitian pearls?

This is a gorgeous strand of multicoloured Tahitians

Then I was browsing through some multicoloured akoyas (very nice) when I spotted a couple of white strands in with the natural coloured ones. ‘oh’ says the seller, ‘they shouldn’t be in there’..then he looks at the label and ‘oh, yes they should: they are natural colour whites’.

My hand shot out and grabbed them instantly. Natural white akoyas…natural white are so rare and hard to find. They haven’t been bleached and they haven’t been pinked. They are naturally white. These are 7mm, round and metallic. Little beauties

Natural white 7mm metallic strands. I grabbed the only two in town

I have fallen in love, apparently, with any and all natural white pearls. This little lot of natural white freshwater rounds of different sizes literally fell onto my foot in a wholesaler’s office where there were all sorts of interesting odds of pearls tucked away under the big sorting table. So of course I had to have it

Natural white round pearls, all different sizes

And were there any pairs?

Yes!

Then this lot of freeform baroques caught my eye. Incredibly metallic. natural white again

Natural white nuggets

The rarest freshwater pearls are…

…natural white freshwater pearls, all nacre. And now I have a totally stunning necklace of these very special pearls.

I had spent the day at my favourite suppliers, head down and matching up all manner of pearls. Intermittently throughout the day the owner of the company, Michael Sze, sat opposite me, making up necklaces from loose undrilled pearls. I watched him as I took a break from matching pearls (you have to look up sometimes otherwise your eyes will fall out)

Michael worked his way through a bag of smaller bead nucleated smooth ripples, then a bag of large pale ripples (he liked that long endless necklace so much he had it drilled and knotted up immediately – you can see the knotting start to finish, including a huge tangle – in a video in the main P video listings. The knotting method is completely different to how we do it, but then I think there are as many different methods as there are knotters)

Finally, as I was thinking of finishing for the day, he brought out a small bag of maybe 500 or so white pearls…natural white pearls and started sorting them. My tired eyes went on stalks. These were simply beautiful pearls.

I started to camera phone video his selection of the choicest of these choice pearls and before I knew it I had fallen in love. Me – the queen of the bigger the better and natural coloured pearls.

By the time he was arranging them as a necklace I was buying them.

white natural colours, white freshwater pearls, michael sze

The finished necklace. 21 inches of beauty

Even my daughter, who isn’t remotely into pearls (!) commented ‘oh that is so beautiful, you can see the quality’

Why is it called the Romana necklace? Because it was bought with the proceeds from the sale of my 1973 Mini Clubman car ROM 308M…As a Dr Who fan, that was immediately Romanadvoratrelundar.

Updated October 2017

I made up the necklace finally

I’m in love..don’t want to take them off.

I’m so in love with these pearls still!

Hong Kong Gem Show, September 2017

There are times when I wish with all my exhausted being that Hong Kong was a bit nearer…sort of like the Isle of Man really. But it is probably just as well that it isn’t, because if I could just pop to the wholesalers every few days Pearlescence would probably be bankrupt within the week. It’s so easy to buy pearls. You just say ‘yes’ and hand over money.

We had a great time. Hard work for many hours but there were pearls. There were friends and there was round the world food. Hong Kong takes its food very seriously. There are a myriad of great places to eat, with examples of every cuisine within a few streets where ever you are. We had Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese (of course) and Nepalese.

So, what about those pearls. Quality is advancing by the month, but at the same time production is down and prices are consequently up. Throw in the drop in value of the £ against the USA $ and the Hong Kong $ and I have brought back a stash of stunning metallic pearls in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but the sadness is that prices must creep upward. When I first went to Hong Kong the HK$ exchange rate was 14HK$ to the £. Now it is 10.

Highlights from the trip.

1…Finding out that love of pearls does not necessarily fade with years

watching the President of the Hong Kong Pearl Association, Michael Sze, putting strands together from bags of loose pearls and clearly enjoying himself. Michael’s company is probably the supplier of the best quality freshwater pearls (no, not Grace) and he’s been in the pearl business well over 20 years but was still clearly enjoying himself putting strands together to take to the show which started in a couple of days. I spend a couple of days there, sitting opposite him for much of the second day as he made strands..watching and learning.

Qne special necklace made by Michael will be getting a blog entry all of its own

2 Huge Tahitians are coming soon

Catching up with Hisano Shepherd, of little h, and her strand of (souffle though they are not souffle) Tahitian pearls.

Hisano Shepherd and her strand of not-souffle Tahitian pearls

These Tahitian pearls look like freshwater souffles and are as big and as lustrous but the growing method to force the rapid growth and large size and different. Hisano and husband Jeremy Shepherd found this strand in Tahiti when there recently. There were a few loose similar pearls on sale at the show from one seller, but the prices were very high. Betty Sue King has taken a few to be assessed and investigated by the GIA.

Selling these enormous pearls has only been possible in the last few months since the legal requirement of a certain depth of nacre over the nucleus for export has been abandoned. These pearls would fail and not be exportable as they have no solid nucleus. I’ve seen similar growing efforts with south sea pearls, although weirdly, some of them also have a regular nucleus. Farmers are clearly experimenting. These will be exciting pearls, and indications are that once they start appearing in numbers in the market the prices will be affordable.

3 Freshwater Souffles

If you love freshwater souffle pearls stock up now as they are not being grown, at least in any numbers. Indeed the wholesaler who was the major supplier did not have any. But big beaded pearls and smaller beaded pearls are as common as all nacre freshwaters now

4 what is that noise?

The first show I went to had this clatter clatter shake noise echoing round the hall occasionally. I didn’t work out what it was. It was only at my second show I managed to catch noise and action together. Pearls being sieved. Pearls are sieved to sort them into sizes. The noise is distinctive and now, when you get to attend the Hong Kong show you’ll know exactly what it is first time!

sieving pearls

There are lots more short videos available on the Pearlescence Facebook page – here

South Sea surprise

Occasionally we have to trim back an irregular top on a drop pearl so a finding will set better.
I was filing a pointy tip off a blue south sea pearl today when the nacre ran out and i could see what looked like compressed peat inside.

Curious..of course.. I poked around inside.

There was fibrous peat like stuff brown

White waxy stuff in lumps.

Flakes of thin plastic like cling film

Flakes of plastic with fibres that looks like medical dressing tape

What was any of that doing inside a pearl?
Is this some sort of an attempt at a souffle south sea pearl?

Not expecting any of this stuff inside a pearl

I’ll take the pearl and its contents to Hong Kong with me and ask around, see if anyone has a clue

Bangkok pearl factory

Head of Amsterdam Pearls Cees Van Oije invited me to visit Bangkok and to go around a sea pearls processing factory in the city.

This was a much bigger operation than the one I visited last year in China. It processed Akoya, South Sea and Tahitian pearls. Nevertheless the processes were just about identical. Pearls came in, were cleaned, sorted, drilled or not drilled, strung, graded and readied for the wholesale market.

Minutely tiny natural colours akoyas. It’s hard to see but some of these tiny tiny pearls were vivid blue

Imagine having to sort and assemble these tiny pearls into strands. Phew!

More tiny pearls

Sorting pearls using natural light from a north facing window

State of the art pearl drill. The cups are controlled by foot pedal and adjust to the correct pressure, both sides drill at once and when the cups release the pearl drops down a chute into a bowl

Pearls are made into strands using grooved boards and bamboo tweezers in front of a north facing window. The workday at the factory starts early to make the most of the north light

Tahitian pearls waiting to be sorted and graded

White South Sea pearls

Hong Kong Spring. First Pearls

Some of the roundish south sea pearls- various golds, greys and whites

This is a combined entry for the first two days here in Hong Kong at the spring jewellery show as this is the first chance I have had to write anything. It’s been busy since I arrived on Tuesday morning and went straight from Hong Kong airport to the show at nearby Asia World Expo centre .

I’ve spent the time finding some very special pearls..mostly some gorgeous south sea blues, golds and yes, some greens. I haven’t even tried to make pairs yet, just gone through bags and bags and bags of pearls to find those few I want to bring to you, as well as work with myself. One of the exciting side effects of being here is that my design brain wakes up and I find ideas popping up..(sometimes in what is the middle of the night here, but daytime in my head still) Of these ideas more in due course as they blossom.

I love this little fella! Large baroque white south sea pearl with blue googly eyes

The £ is sickly here…only three years ago one GBP bought $14.5HK and $1.60 USD. Now when I changed my money last night the best I could find was $9.56.HK and the USD is at 1.22. So prices will have to rise.

Breaking today’s HKD rate is 9.53. It just gets worse)

Anyway.here are some photos of the pearls!

two south sea strands

I’m dashing off now for day three. captions etc later!

Poke pearls

When I’m not up to my elbows in pearls I try to catch pokemon. When I was in Hong Kong I was struck (although not literally of course!) by how some pearls resemble pokemon. I came up with the idea of Poke pearls.

Huge Tahtian poke pearl

I spent several hours on the last day of the show delving around the show to find the quirkiest of the tahitian and south sea pearls. They made me smile. They are not serious grown up pearls, they are silly and fun pearls, but if you are a pokemon trainer..maybe you’ll enjoy too. I hope so!

We’ve given them their own section on the website

http://www.pearlescence.co.uk/index.php/cPath/293

Blue south sea little figure poke pearl

Little dancing blue south sea poke pearl

Hallowe’en

BOO!

(Thanks to Jack Lynch of Sea Hunt Pearls for permission to use this silly fireball pearl photo)

Sustainable pearls, ethical pearls.

I’ve had several enquiries recently about sustainable pearls and/or ethical pearls. (the terms seem to be used interchangeably). The standard pearl industry answer is that it is impossible to supply sustainable pearls or ethical pearls because pearls from many sources get mixed together indistinguishably in their journey between farm and wearer.

Most pearl farms are sustainable and ethical because they are often staffed by family, or with a small local staff which helps the local economy and in any case pearl farms have to be environmentally pretty sound because all molluscs are ready to die off at the least excuse – too hot, too cold, too salty, too brackish, too freshwater (sea pearl farms can be wiped out by a series of thunderstorms inland diluting the saline environment near a delta for example). They are all like Goldilocks, everything must be just right. Then they can reject the graft, get infected, get choked by weeds so they starve.

But most pearls on sale travel from farm to pearl factory to wholesaler to importer to local wholesaler to retailer. At Pearlescence we cut out a couple of those stages as we usually buy pearls which travel farm to factory to wholesaler to us. For most sea pearls – gold, blue and white south seas, Tahitian and Akoya this is true, and for all freshwater pearls.

But, on the plane on the way to Hong Kong I had plenty of time to think (oh how I wish Hong Kong was a bit nearer!) and realised that I know enough sea pearl farmers and farms individually to cover most types of salt water pearls (yes to Tahitian, Sea of Cortez and Vietnamese Akoya) . Freshwater pearls were going to be the problem, simply because they invariably go from farm to pearl factory where the harvests from many farms is mixed, graded, blended, treated and turned into wholesale-ready product.

(This blog post will also dispel the myth put about by some freshwater pearl seller that they buy pearls direct from the farm and their stock is full of strands)

As the flight progressed I remembered that I know one family with its own small factory. The result was that before I left a 1 kilo scoop of pearls had been taken from a lot of pearls as they came into the factory, before any treatment, mixing, sorting or anything was done to them. Nothing done except a quick wash.

The bag of pearls, just as they came from the farm to the factory, before any processing

The more I look at them the more fascinating this snapshot of the production from one Chinese pearl farm is. The colour is predominantly a pale peach, with degrees up to pretty orange. Most of the pearls are elliptical or potato, with lots of buttons too. Sizes range from a couple of mm to about 12mm with around 7mm to 8mm being the average. Most pearls have a decent surface, although some have rings. But it is the quality of the lustre which is most intriguing. Most of the lustre is around A+ or AA. There are quite a few pearls with no lustre at all, completely flat and dull,while maybe a hundred have enough lustre and colour for me to buy them. There’s even a single white tiny rosebud/granulated pearl!

Here are the bad pearls – you can see the ugly black deposits, the lack of lustre, and general yuckness

The bad pearls really are dire – as the photo shows. Some of them look like teeth which have been left to the mercy of a really incompetent dentist, who has made merry with old fashioned amalgam, which others are completely without any lustre, just chalk. There’s one of these which is nearly all completely dull but with an intensely metallic tip.

Anyway, we are going to attempt a few pairings and see if we can make some single farm source stud and dangle earrings out of the better pearls.

We also brought back some of the crushed walnut shell used to buff the pearls so I intend to try doing that to see how the average pearls and the good already pearls are improved. The buffing is allowed (maeshori) as it is no different to buffing up your fingernails to put a shine on them

What this experiment shows mostly is that pearl factories work; the good quality pearls which Pearlescence offers really are the top 0.5% (or less) of any general pearl harvest, and that you can find single farm sustainable pearls if you have the contacts!

September Hong Kong reflections and musings…

I think that this was one of my all time favourite trips to Hong Kong. It was so humid that breathing felt a bit like sucking air through a sponge at times, and too much air con made my sinuses very angry, but in terms of pearls and pearl friends, perfect.

Prices were generally stable, with some silliness, especially from one company which made it very clear you can slap any old price on an item but it is only the item’s value when someone will pay it. $40k for a muddy purple strand of Edisons which weren’t even well matched? Those high priced strands weren’t even super-special. Very nice yes, rich colour, pretty clean and shiny but special…no. Grace has cut prices on a lot of stock this time around – a lot of the good colour ripple strands were really cut in price from around $1k (too high) to down to $300 which is what everyone else charges for comparable. Grace had trays and trays of the ear-wax dyed ‘gold south seas’ too- which were not selling much
There were no strands of the distinctive raspberry purples like the ones I treated myself to 18 months ago. That really does seem to have been a one-off colour from that harvest (smug mode)

There’s nothing new on the horizon, such as bead nucleated or souffles (very rare now though selling to India!) on the horizon. (although one wholesaler had just sold his entire stock of 20kg of souffles just before I arrived. That’s a lot of light big pearls
Prices are volatile: top quality prices are up while medium are down
Best seller for most sellers is high quality white rounds
Singles prices are very high
There are very few large size dyed black or natural colour singles around
Tahitian and south sea prices are falling, for less than top quality.
Funnily enough there is hardly any dyed coloured stock to be found. Any that is has probably been hanging around for years.

Day 7. Days of lustre – Final day at AWE

My final day. I had an idea overnight so off to AWE (Asia World Expo, the huge exhibition facility near to the airport on Lantau Island, about 30 minutes from Kowloon) to find the pearls I needed – handy to have the idea before I go home rather than after, which would be what I usually manage.

So I was on a mission. First off I managed to find some new clasps by accident though.

new clasps

These little sparkles have a post which fits right into the drill hole of the last pearl and fasten and open with a push/twist. A bonus is that once you have the ends fitted to a necklace you can change the ball to suit your whim, and they can be worn clasp out, as a feature bead. I’ll be interested to see how they go, and also need to figure out how to finish the knotted silk without a loop to go around..that’s one to keep me awake.

Long time friend Nerida Harris, director of Australian pearl super company Pearl Perfection had only just arrived after back to back trade shows, so we grabbed a quick coffee before she shot off list in hand. Nerida took me under her expert wing when I came here to Hong Kong for the first time. We found one of the first lots of ripple strands buried under lots of other pearls on the Grace pearl stand and split them three each. We gasped at the beauty and colour of these totally new pearls.

But on to the pearls I wanted. Without giving away my idea just yet I needed to look for some specific pearls. Not common or usual at the show, but when I found a stand with a couple of bags of them, oh the bliss of sitting down and going though them all to find just the ones which fitted the brief.

I thought I was done after that and was vaguely thinking ‘if I spend any more time here I’ll just spend’ and ‘lunch sounds nice’ when I made the mistake of showing my little collection to pearl total goddess Betty Sue King, who has forgotten more about pearls than most people ever learn and whose eye is trusted the world over. She loved the pearls so back to the stand we went and spent nearly two hours going through the whole lot again.

Sitting trawling through bags of pearls with someone as fabulous and nice as Betty Sue is a lovely, unstressed way to finish an amazing time in Hong Kong. Here we are, up to our elbows in pearls. What could be better?

Me and Betty Sue King

Goodbye Hong Kong

Lustre day 6..Blue, blue and blue

Another lustrous day. First off we had a private viewing of some fabulous Riketea Tahitian pearls, Beautiful lustre and colour. Plus south seas; gold, white and blue.I think I could have very happily bought every single pearl. There were strands and single pearls, including some huge blue south sea pearls

Huge blue south sea baroque pearls, up to 18mm

Rketea Tahitian pearl strands

One interesting snippit of information was the variation in nacre deposition between apparently identical Vietnamese akoya pearls on the same farm and growing side by side (there are only three akoya pearl farms in Vietnam)

Both pearls grow on the same tiny nucleus in the same conditions on the same farm, nucleated at the same time and harvested at the same time.

You can see how tiny the nucleus is -0.9mm- and in only eight months there is enough nacre to keep everyone very happy indeed. The pearls are 8mm and 7.4mm

Only Vietnamese farms seem to produce the really strong blue akoya, although they were scarce except in the baroque singes which I selected on the first day of the show. There were strands of grey with a blue cast but none of the startlingly royal blues which are possible occasionally.

Speaking of blue pearls, here is one of the Riketea atoll strands, every one a true blue tahitian pearl, rather than green with a blue cast. Quite lovely.And large 10mm to 13mm with metallic lustre.

Blue tahitian pearl strand

In the afternoon I went right across the huge Asia World Expo site to the other end to the hall with tools, and had a bit of a Tim Taylor interlude.

There were 3d printers printing gold items, laser cutters as well as machines for making the wax forms for lost wax casting.and the basic tools for silversmiths, which probably haven’t changed for centuries. Indeed probably one of the superb craftsmen from millennia ago in Egypt would not only recognise most tools but be able to pick them up and set to work with them.

I treated myself to a proper set of ring measures and a ring measure stick. I’ve only been wanting them for 20 years so it was probably time without being profligate

Finally I went to catch up with Andrew, the boss of the world class polishing cloth company Town Talk. It’s one of those silly things that we are based only about 25 miles apart but have to travel to Hong Kong to talk!

Town Talk Polish Cloths. Made in Lancashire

Lustre Day 5..Few pearls…much work

Looking at today’s spoils…it seems a very small lot, for a day’s quite intense work. There are some stone set clasps which caught my eye because they have posts which go into the drill hole of a full drilled pearl rather than rings for silk plus French wire. So they will need experimentation. They could be the next big thing in opening and closing…but only if the adhesive adheres. I suspect that there is quite a stress on the glue fixing when the clasp is undone. But they look very pretty

Next I spent some time finding a very few decent 11-12mm black buttons. It;s hard to find black pearls still. There are smaller ones, but trying to match the larger ones for shape, colour, lustre and size……I also waded through smaller {9-10mm} natural colour buttons. Even from a huge bag I only found one pair which satisfied my criteria.I did get some of the singles though, because they had stunning lustre.

Finally I was spotted by the lady who used to look after me at one tahitian wholesaler, who told me she had now moved to another firm. We did some catching up and I looked at the pearl stock. I got a pair of lovely white Paspaley south sea drops from Australia, some gold round south sea pairs and some fun single tahitians, including a couple of what we decided are polemon pearls – aka pokepearls.

Lustre Day 4..first day of show

A wonderful first day out at the Asia World Expo gem fair, though the humidity (95% and more) is so sapping that I crawled to my room and individual aircon ridiculously early. So today’s blog will be a bit light on photos simply because at times it was hard to think through the soggy.

At these shows my first stop is now always the lovely ladies of the small company which produces akoya pearls from their one farm in Vietnam. They are always so welcoming and patient that it makes a lovely start to the day.

The first thing I want to look at are the little packets of their baroque pearls. Tiny packets of super metallic bue, pink, green and grey. Each one unique and surely an inspiration for any designers

Such amazing little gems

It is such fun sorting through the packets, marvelling at the rich colours and incredible lustre of these tiny gem pearls. Which one will excite a designer? There was a deep and rich royal blue one which I picked while it was still in the packet, scrabbling round in the tiny envelope to grasp it, it was so striking. And there was a lovely little drop too. You can tell that the colour is strong in these pearls because you can still see it clearly in the photo, in spite of the efforts of the fluorescent lights to wash out any trace of blue.

Next up the ladies showed me their few strands of natural colour akoya pearls. The strand I selected stood out, luminous metallic lustre and such beausiful colours.

The two darkest pearls are deep blue and deep green.

I also got some strands of tiny baroques, multicoloured. These pearls come from one farm in Vietnam. They are very ethically and sustainably produced

Believe it or not these are all natural colour akoya pearls natural colour akoya pearls

Tiny Vietnamese akoya pearls, natural colours of greys, pinks,boues, greens. Metallic

It doesn’t take long to write about it, but selecting these strands, chatting and settling such vital stuff as the price take well over an hour.

Next stop is always the main findings company. All the findings they currently have in stock are laid out in small packets and I’m soon rifling through hundreds of different clasps, earrings, and all sorts of silver. the table top is very wide so to reach the ones at the back I debated climbing right up there..but in the end just stretched. Not sure how that looked from the back!. Trying to work out what will be needed for our various couture and ready to wear lines, new ideas and one offs for customers, as well as for other designer makers is a bit of an exercise!. But having grabbed a good selection I know I can call back for a second browse..probably to buy the same new designs all over again. There is a lot of silver with very subtly inlaid CZ for just a little sparkle

There’s more black – anodised – silver than I expected: and less rose gold vermeil.

Finally – it’s now gone 2pm – I spend the rest of the time at one of the tahitian and south sea suppliers. One white SS and one gold SS strand and then a poke around in their lot bags for the surprise pairs and singles which will make great jewellery – including a matched pair of 15mm gold south sea buttons.One is very slighty darker than the other, but with a head in between the it certainly won’t be noticeable t9 any but a pearl expert. Result!

Tired. Back to Kowloon, food and back to room to write this. G’night

Lustre day 3

Tahitians are getting in on the act. More lustre. More colour. After sifting through nine lots of Tahitians of all shapes, sizes and colours, I, try the tenth and last, and it yields all the pearls I want, including some spectaular silver body and pink eye pearl pairs for studs, some more blues and a couple of huge drops.

Truely blue Tahitian pearls

The blues of these blues hasn’t really come through in this photo but they are a lovely royal blue and will look stupendous with the paler blues I got yesterday. I think I am building a necklace. No more of those pink ones though..

Those Tahitians were pure serendipity in one way though as I had no intention of getting any such at this particular seller’s. Once again i got stuck after planning just a couple of hours in that office. Many pearls, including some minute white keishi, probably 3mm, which will make some very pretty delicate bracelets, I think, matched with 7mm petal keishi discy lumps which will be drilled for stud earrings. That’s definitely the sort of drilling where you don’t actually dare look as you drill

Lustre Day 2

Day 2 was a very shiny day. Metallic all the way. Had intended to go to this wholesaler and that one and maybe call in at another too. In the end I was at the first place all day. He lured me with shiny things.

Gorgeous tahitians. every possible colour

First up was a large bag of mixed Tahitians. Probably a couple of thousand in the bag. After going through the I think I selected some gorgeous silver grey and pink ones, some blues and a pair of silver and pink rounds for studs which already have a home lined up – 12mm and up.

The grey and pink ones are mostly pink. Really unusual.

I decided to go with the trend and get some of these really pretty,feminine and delicate graduated strands in natural colours and all whites. I’m not looking forward to stringing the tiny tinies.

So feminine

Then I remembered I did have a list so next up were 7mm white drop pairs – one card matched of super metallic..and I mean super metallic ..pairs. Then on to 9mm drops. another card and pick out the rare long thin drops and finally pair them too. The lustre on these pearls really was spectacular.

Going though the white drops, I could not help

Huge box of metallic drops

but reflect that I was rejecting – as not metallic enough -pearls which would have been remarkable ten years, or even five years ago, as not shiny enough. the pairs selected are really super metallic. Dazzling. I wondered where the quality goes from super-metallic shiny, white, great drop shape and clean surface. You can see the large box and guesstimate how many pearls are in it, full to the brim. All metallic. Just some with the matched overtones and degree of lustre, shape and size.

Next to where I was being dazzled by the whites was a long time member of staff at this office. With interruptions he spent the whole day sorting and pairing 5mm round white pearls from a pile of many thousands.

September Hong Kong Show..oh the lustre. Day 1

The senior man at my favourite wholesalers here in Hong Kong has me totally sussed as a real pearl junkie. His – very successful – technique is to wander past me, with some amazing new pearls in his hand, letting me catch just a glimpse, like allowing a dog to catch just a whiff of a steak.

So I’m sitting there. feeling a bit disoriented, long flight, not much sleep . check in to hotel and straight out to get the pearls, and I’m looking for some huge perfect white buttons. when he comes over with this hank of five strands of the most amazing – that is most amazing- huge natural coloured rounds. One strand in particular has all metallic lustre and I can already hear it’s siren sussuration..’I’m so pretty..take me home with you, take me home. I love you…take me home’ I’m resisting so hard. This trip is all about specimen singles and pairs. It’s going to be sitting in offices going through thousands of pearls for those double double shiny elusive few which you can only source in person.

Within seconds this one strand especially is talking to me, and I’m cooing back at it and stroking it.

Love at first sight

still in love

Now there have been a lot of natural colour bead nucleated pearls around in the last year or so, most of them with very washed out colour, as if they had been bleached in the sun. There were the very rare spectacular deep plum strands a few years ago, but none even of those in spite of the clamour for them at the last couple of trips. Deep rich coloured bead nucleated pearls were not happening. Then these five strands. All deep rich colour and with lustre from very very good to metallic. From talking with other buyers last night it seems as if each wholesaler has managed to source just a few strands.

With its friends

So far I have resisted…sort of. That one strand is tucked away in a drawer. Oh I am so weak.

But what would you do?

In other news of pearls from an afternoon of rather jet laggy selecting (HK is seven hours ahead. The plane I travelled on had recently played host in the cargo hold in the tail to 12 horses, two elephants and one £1m+ car…though not at the same time. The flight attendant allowed me a peak into the hold. Just packages and webbing and all remarkably scruffy, with a faint wiff of horse still lingering)

Lustre is simply getting better and better. Wholesalers are taking to labelling stock AAAA when they have a bag full of metallics. Supplies are good and prices stable.