Pearl Society

Pearl Week 2009 part 2 - Sunday, August 30th Pearl Society event

Event II – Pearls and the Secondary Market: What Happens to Your Unwanted Jewelry?
Sunday, August 30, 2009

3pm to 5pm
at the Eve J. Alfillé Gallery
623 Grove Street, Evanston, IL

At its Sunday August 30, 2009 meeting, The Pearl Society will welcome Ruth Thuston, G.G., Chicago director of Circa, who will address the topic of the secondary pearl and jewelry market.

Circa is an international business organization with the slogan “We take it from here.” They provide a simplified, expeditious buying service for no-longer-needed jewelry.  Their elegant advertising now blankets the nation. Pearl Society members also will learn what happens to the jewels once they have been acquired, a complex and fascinating look into the little-known secondary market.

While Pearl Society founder Eve Alfillé generally suggests redesigning family gems so they suit a new generation owner, sometimes more value can be realized by putting a particularly attractive period piece up for sale.

Ruth Thuston spent 20 years of her career consulting, singing and counseling before pursuing her passion for jewelry by first studying gemology as a GIA distance student and then selling jewelry in two of Chicago’s finest jewelry stores. Ruth is currently the Chicago Director of CIRCA, a national jewelry buying company headquartered in New York.



RSVP: 847-869-7920 or email contact@evejewelry.com
Please RSVP Now – space is limited

Mystery of the 30th Anniversary Pearl!

In response to an inquiry, I recently unraveled the Mystery of the 30th Anniversary Pearl! 

As founder of The Pearl Society, I was approached by an individual searching for the origin of the designation of Pearls as the traditional 30th anniversary gift.  

In The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, Dover reprint edition, in his chapter on Birthstones,  Kunz gives the definitive source of the generally accepted birthstone list (p.317): it was approved by the National Association of Jewellers at a meeting in Kansas City in August of 1912, (with small emendations since that time.-ed.)  

But we were looking for anniversaries, not birthdays.  I pressed on. 

Kunz devotes great detail to the story behind the idea of natal and Zodiac gems.  The idea is first mentioned in late Roman times, by the historian Josephus in the 1st century of the Common Era, then by St Jerome in the 5th C.  Based largely on the 12 gems of the priestly breastplate in the Bible, the list went through a number of adjustments, with pearls the birthstone for June, along with moonstone.  

Finally, on page 337, I found a list of wedding anniversary gems, with Pearls for the 30th (the 3rd is linen). It turns out  the Father of U.S. Gemologists, George Frederic Kunz, is the source!   No accreditation, even though Kunz waxes detailed and eloquent about the six other lists in this chapter on Natal Stones.

Here are the 7 lists:
1. The most common, derived from the  Hebrew Priest's breastplate.
2. Talismanic gems derived from the  twelve guardian angels (no pearl among those)
3. A list of U.S. birthstones  
4. A Hindu list of birthstones  (June is pearl, as in the commonly accepted U.S. one)
5. Gems of Weekdays (Talismanic gem: Sunday is pearl) 6. Gems of the Hours (night hours, day hours)         
 
and finally, without any discussion of origin:           
7. Gems of Wedding Anniversaries .. THAT IS THE ONE!

-Eve

Wild Pearls - Keshis

Eve explains Keshi Pearls

First of all, Keshi in Japanese means 'poppy seed'. It was the name given to the tiny pearls found when they opened Akoya oysters in Japan and expected to find round pearls, but the nucleus might have been expelled, and some tiny pearls like poppy seeds formed instead. They are not exactly natural (non-nucleated) pearls since the oyster had been stimulated by man. Perhaps some bits of the implanted tissue had loosened, but they are not  a cultured pearl either, so the name Keshi stuck. Eventually people decided to drill and to string those tiny irregular but pretty pearls, and make them into multistrand chokers, usually not knotted, and fairly expensive because of all the labor.
 
Then, in Australia and Tahiti, when the same thing occurred, the keshis were obviously larger, but still interestingly shaped, and very pretty. Having no nucleus meant all nacre, and often very lustrous – great for rings, earrings, and single strand necklaces, and expensive because they are rare.

The GIA called them 'adventitious' pearls ( wild, or happenstance pearls), i.e., not cultured, but not exactly natural.
 
Then came China. The Chinese were excited to cash in on the demand for pearls, and they did not really care about, or understand existing terminology. So for instance, they looked at the now extinct Japanese Lake Biwa pearls... well, their pearls were freshwater too, odd-shaped, so they called them Biwa too, no matter that they had nothing to do with lake Biwa! Sigh.. what could the world do?
 
Now the Chinese came up with another pearl idea: When they started culturing coin pearls, which have a nucleus, they would harvest the pearls carefully, then put the mussels back in the water for a year without renucleating them, just to see what would happen: well, strange petal-like pearls would form in the old pearl sac, second-generation, or born-again pearls, as they were called in Chinese.   
 
Then someone in China looked at what would be a better name for trade, and came upon the word Keshi. At first, the rest of the world was resistant: real Keshis were formed differently, they occurred in the original production cycle INSTEAD of the original pearl that was expected. But then they rationalized that there were similarities: both types of pearl occurred without a nucleus, both had accidental shapes that could not be controlled... why fight it? Once again, Chinese dictated the terminology, and so the dealers who tell you their pearls are keshi are just following the (now) generally accepted custom.  If you can't beat them..