Tag Archives: freshwater

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.

Two stunning pearl necklaces.

Not posted for a while….it’s been busy but uneventful, with added stock sorting. And compiling lists of wants and needs and requests for Hong Kong next week.  Wendy will be making blog entries every day, with photos so follow the first pearl adventure of the year

Until then, here are two stunning necklaces sold by pearl friends

First is a necklace of perfect archetypical peacock Tahitians from one of the world’s biggest wholesalers of Tahitians, Wiart Loic.

peacocks Wiart LoïcThe green body colour and aubergine ‘eye on each huge perfectly round tahitian is …….oh…….perfection.

Second, this necklace of huge white round pearls is made up of freshwater pearls..yes, really, freshwater pearls.  It comes from lovely Jack Lynch of Sea Hunt Pearls. He’s the man who coined the name ‘souffle’ for the huge hollow pearls.

jack lynch sea hunt freshwater 15.4-19.3 $20kThe pearls are 15.4mm to 19.3mm and would have been yours for a modest $20k, if you had got to him before his buyer..but it does go to show that fabulous freshwater pearls are just as much fabulous pearls as their equally bead nucleated cousins these days.

Day…? Final reflections

Leave a Reply

Final reflections on this year’s buying trip. There are good pearls out there, but the only way to find them is undoubtedly to select them in person. With the best of relationships with a supplier, if you order, say, 10 strands of AAA white 8mm round pearls, that is what you will get, but you won’t get ten with metallic lustre. You’ll just get 10 strands from the AAA white 8mm bag or hank. Nor will you get pearls like that blue baroque Edison or the ripple gold south sea. They were both one-offs which I had to be there to scoop.

I had all sizes and shapes of loose (that means individual not strands) half drilled pearls on the big list. They had been very short of supply last year and this year was not much better. I don’t think I found any blacks which I wanted to buy in any shape or size. And just a few natural colours. Given that loose pearls are invariably more expensive than pearls in strands you would think that decent pearls would be selected out for this, but it seems not.

Bead Nucleated freshwater pearls continue their march for pearl world domination, with non-Edison branded pearls now very close in quality to the originator of the method and with a rapidly expanding portfolio of sizes, colours and surfaces. I saw, not just ripples and smooth big pearls but more of the baby white Edisons (I still have some from last year), smaller coloureds, tiny round 5mm vibrant coloured ones I was told were keishi, and generally more and more ‘routine’ pearls with a bead instead of solid nacre. Are solid nacre freshwater pearls going to disappear or be so rare as to be highly prized a few years into the future?

Finally, we are pawing at the pearls from today once we have caught up with the order backlog (for which we massively apologise) and we will be posting new makes and pearls as soon as we can in a separate section (we have yet to think up a good name for it!) watch not this, but that space