Tag Archives: natural white akoya pearls

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.

natural white pearls

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

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.

edison, pearls, round, natural colour

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.

big natural colour edison pearls

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

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?

multicoloured tahitian pearl strand

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 akoya

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

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

Natural white nuggets