Tag Archives: pearlescence

Mermaid Core meets Coastal Grandmother

This year’s hottest fashion trend is as wet as the UK summer has been so far. #CoastalGrandmother has morphed into mermaidcore.

Well..I live by the coast and I am a grandmother, so I quite liked the coastal grandmother trend. Think neutrals, especially beige tones from vanilla to coffee.Natural fibres, loose fitting and simply comfy. The sort of clothes you would wear to go beachcombing for shells or seaglass if you were a jeweller (ahem!)

Add the shells, seaweed and beachy stuff of #mermaidcore to the beige and whites of of the coast – venture onto the sands and clamber over the rock pools to find the treasures and you have a #mergranny (!) style.

Mergranny is very much a look for sunny, languorous days. You can’t rush. Because you are calm, independent, mature, comfortable in your skin. If you, by contrast want to go full mermaidcore, that’s much more glamorous and evenings, when you can be taken out and spoiled and spoiled. You can rock along a red carpet, be wined and dined.

A Pearl Emergency

Every so often we get a phone call and find ourselves strapping blue flashing lights to our heads and shouting whoop-whoop noises. That happened last Friday when, around lunch-time, we had a call from someone who wanted a present for a 100th birthday. The party was the next day (Saturday). Okkkkkay. Eventually we agreed that it would be perfect – and faster – to make a necklace from scratch using a magnetic clasp instead of re-making an existing stock item.

Wendy’s fingers flew along a strand of 8mm AAA metallic luster round natural coloured multi coloured pearls, with an easy to use silver and rare earth magnets clasp and we leapt for the Post office for delivery tomorrow morning. Post offices closed. Holiday!

Eventually it transpired that our clients lived not so far away so the day was saved as they drove up to collect it before the party.

We think the special effort for this wonderful centenarian was very worth it. She’s reportedly delighted. She lives alone with only light support. That’s PEARL POWER at its finest!

P

Parure

A matched set of jewellery, which might include earrings, a necklace, brooches, rings, and other pieces.

Peanut

A peanut pearl is formed when two nuclei in a seeded pearl stick and then grow together to make something which resembles the shell of a peanut.

Pearlescence

Resembling pearl or mother-of-pearl in iridescence and lustre (or, of course, an excellent source of all things pearl)

Pick a Pearl

A marketing ploy used in some tourist shops whereby the customer selects a shell which has been pre-seeded with a pearl of some sort, and lo – there is their pearl. Look closely and the mollusc is preserved in chemicals and long dead and the pearls usually freshwater. Pearlescence heard of one operation in the UK where someone got a dyed green potato pearl and was told it was green because the oyster was sick. Pearlescence knows where to buy these seeded molluscs for under $1 a time in China. But wouldn’t.

Tinned pickled pearls………….

Nicknamed Pipi pearls. The smallest of the oceanic pearl producing oysters and possibly the direct ancestor of all of them. It produces bright, lustrous deep golden pearls but is too small to be farmed on a realistic commercial basis. The shells are only about 20mm and pearls range from 2mm to 5mm.

Pinctada margaritifera

This mollusc produces the black Tahitian pearl in French Polynesia, the Cook Islands and Australia

Pinking

A very common to routine treatment especially for akoya pearls whereby the pearl, after bleaching, is dyed so that it shows a tinge of pink.

Pondslime

Pondslime is the name given to pearls which show an unusual golden to brown coating to their natural colour nacre. These pearls used to be either discarded as junk or dyed dark colours to disguise what was seen as a failure in cultivation but now such natural effects are valued and desirable. The effect ranges from a dull nicotine brown to dazzling gold as if the pearl has a layer of gold leaf

Popcorn Pearls

Pearls of any shape on which the surface nacre has a granulated appearance so that they look like fresh popcorn. We call them granulated pearls. Also called rosebud or strawberry pearls and in China, mao-jyue or hairy pearls.

Popcorn pearls

Potato

Any mis-shapen pearl is a potato pearl because it resembles a potato. Also called irregular pearls or nugget pearls. Cheaper potato pearls will have one flat surface but the better ones are rounded all around

Better quality potato pearls have smooth rounded surfaces and great lustre

Pteria sterna The rainbow lipped oyster which produces the pearls of the Sea of Cortez, Mexico These pearls fluoresce red under ultra-violet light.

Santa search – new gift finder feature

A whole new feature on the website just went live. Code name Santa search It’s the new easy-peasy gift finder search program I thought up a couple of weeks ago and which our amazing webmaster Neil has constructed so that it has come out exactly as I thought up.

The whole idea is to make it easy for people who are confused by the full website to have just one or two choices of pearl colour and price range. They can pick one of the suggestions or then follow it up with either phone or email if they don’t see what they want or like and we can take it from there.

Hopefully this will make it much easier for those who are daunted by choice!

Goldsmiths’ Company event for students

.Yesterday and Friday the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and the London Assay Office held an event for UK jewellery students to learn about all sorts of businesses which support and supply their crafts and skills, from all about hallmarking itself to……pearls………..US!

The flag’s out -outside the guild’s hall

Over the two days we’ve talked ourselves hoarse about pearls (my voice has dropped about an octave at least!) with students and with some of the leaders of the jewellery business in the country. I don’t know if I wasn’t more excited than many of the students at who was there and who we met.

Through the imposing doors and up the sweeping staircase to our waiting stand, in the livery colour of crimson with Pearlescence in gold lettering, and under the crest of the livery company (www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk)- I know from a previous visit that security is very tight – it has to be because the London Assay Office, which checks and oversees the quality of £millions in precious metals is on the top floors.(www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk/welcome-to-the-assay–office)

crest of the worshipful company of goldsmiths

The Drawing Room is the room used by the film company to stand in for Buckingham Palace in the film The Queen, starring Helen Mirren. It’s all white and gold,

We set up and go round to see who else is here. It’s by invitation, and many of us are as stunned as I am to have been asked. There’s a big buzz of excitement…

The Drawing Room, Goldsmiths’ Hall

Pretty soon the students start to flood in and immediately home in on the fireballs I’ve brought. My aim in choosing what to bring was to keep it pared down and show that there is so much more to pearls than white and round and the fireballs and big ripples I selected start their job immediately. By the end of the two days I think I explained how fireballs happen at least once per hour! The students love them, and fireballs.

I did several knotting demonstrations as well during the two days. By the last one my co-ordination had gone completely and I got knots!

me plus demonstration table

At the end, @goldpolisher and I both asked if we could keep our name labels from the front of our stands as souvenirs. We abruptly changed our minds though when it was pointed out that this would mean we would not be coming back. ‘Keep them…Please!’

Special thanks to @stevelao and Alison of the assay office, plus to the wonderful, unfailingly helpful, knowledgeable and friendly Goldsmiths’ Company and London Assay Office staff.

Most memorable moment…Looking at the panels on the wall listing the Masters of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths dating back to 1317 and realising that I’m standing right there – by invitation!