Pearl Society

Pearl Guru Eve Alfillé to Lead Seminars at the Peninsula School of Art

The Peninsula School of Art has arranged for pearl expert and founder of The Pearl Society, Eve J. Alfillé, to lead a pair of seminars on Pearls: Designing with Pearls and  Buying and Collecting Pearls. Consider taking an inspiring trip to beautiful Door County, Wisconsin where you can hear and learn more about pearls while attending Eve's seminars and enjoy the scenic beauty! 

Always an elegant element in jewelry, pearls are surprisingly easy to incorporate into your work. Learn a wide variety of approaches to designing with pearls from Eve Alfillé, founder of the international Pearl Society. Eve will present two pearl project designs using both metal wire and sheet, followed by an opportunity to work on your own designs with her assistance. Eve shares her passion and wisdom about pearls in tales filled with ancient and flamboyant characters, but also imparts much practical knowledge, both for those who wish to design with pearls, and for those who love to acquire them. www.EveJewelry.com

For over 40 years, Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, has been a destination for visual arts education in a wide range of media.Over 100 years ago, artists began to retreat to Door County seeking inspiration from our landscape. They met and studied together informally and from this fledgling art colony, grew the desire to create a permanent place for artistic study and development on the Door Peninsula. Founded over 45 years ago, Peninsula School of Art, has grown to become a year-round destination for artists and art appreciators of all ages and levels.

To register go to their website by clicking this link: Peninsula School of Art.  Or you can type this address into your web browser: http://www.peninsulaschoolofart.com.

The information below was taken directly from their website course listings:

 

Title: Designing with Pearls

Instructor: Eve Alfille

Course ID: JE1215

Date: Fri-Sat • Aug 3-4 • 9am-4pm

Media: Pearls

Level: Advanced Beginner and Above

Member Tuition: $320 + materials fee

Non-Member Tuition: $345 + materials fee

Concept: Always an elegant element in jewelry, pearls are surprisingly easy to incorporate into your work. Learn a wide variety of approaches to designing with pearls from Eve Alfillé, founder of the international Pearl Society. Eve will present two pearl project designs using both metal wire and sheet, followed by an opportunity to work on your own designs with her assistance. Learn the most contemporary of techniques, such as caged pearls, in addition to creating a non-traditional clasp and the basic technique of drilling pearls. Eve will also contrast her applications to those of other exotic pearl designers.

Experience: Eve begins the workshop with a presentation on the different types of pearls, their habitats, farming techniques, and economic facts as they affect jewelry designers. She will also bring advanced ideas for future projects. Eve will supply pearls for the workshop projects, with additional pearls available for purchase for later work. You should be confident with your fabrication skills to get the most benefit from this workshop.

Instructor Bio: Eve J. Alfille, once a field archeologist, was fascinated to see how jewelry played a part from the beginning of human history. She decided to make it her life's work, and started her gallery and studio of fine jewelry (Evanston IL) over twenty-five years ago, and also became a collector of rare and exotic gems and pearls. In 1990, she founded The Pearl Society, devoted to the study of pearls through the ages and the preservation of their delicate habitats. Eve shares her passion and wisdom about pearls in tales filled with ancient history and flamboyant characters, but also imparts much practical knowledge, both for those who wish to design with pearls, and for those who love to acquire them. Pearls, nature's creations of calcium carbonate, represent the paradox of incredible beauty born from a mollusk's temporary irritation.

Title: Buying and Collecting Pearls

Instructor: Eve Alfille

Course ID: LE1210

Date: Sat • Aug 4 • 1pm to 5pm

Media:

Level: Open to All Levels

Member Tuition: $65

Non-Member Tuition: $70

Concept: Join Eve Alfillé, the founder of the international Pearl Society and passionate collector, for an in-depth look at the world of pearls and pearl jewelry. Learn of the pearl’s ancient history, their collection by flamboyant characters throughout time, as well as practical knowledge about determining pearl’s authenticity, their care, their worth, when to re-string, and redesigning contemporary jewelry from heirloom pieces. Examine and handle a sampling from Eve’s rare, varied collection gathered from throughout the world, including natural pearls, cultured pearls, faux pearls and simulated pearls. Explore past and present pearl fashions and learn how they are connected to pearl origins and occurrences. Discover new pearl colors, and other recent innovations in the industry brought forth from China and Viet Nam.

2012 Pearl Society Planned Programs

Dear Readers & Fellow Pearl Enthusiasts,

Our founder, artist & designer Eve J. Alfillé has set an interesting and varied agenda for this year's meetings. As you will see, some of the dates have not been fully confirmed, pending the speakers travel plans. However, the topics and a time frame for these meetings have been given so you will be able to make your own plans and still attend these exciting sessions. Our first meeting of the year, January 15th meeting, Miracles of refracted light: Pearls and Opals with speaker Robert Shapiro, was a well attended success and the audience enjoyed a bountiful array of both pearls and beautiful boulder opals.

Our schedule of upcoming meetings is below, and we look forward to having you join our adventures:

On April 19 or 24 (exact date to be announced), our first ever encounter with a specialist in keshi pearls will take place.  Their unique ways of working will these extremely small pearls, often introducing slivers of other gems, will be a surprise to most attendees.

On May 20, author Renee Newman, whom many of us met during the book signing for her popular “Pearls” book, will return to discuss  the many mysteries of “Rare Gems”, her new work. Come see which of these you might be familiar with!

In July (exact date to be announced), we will return for a glimpse into the Great Pearl Rush and its aftermath. Historian George Johnson discovered a trove of detailed photos documenting the muddy and somewhat malodorous  life at a Wisconsin “pearl camp”, and Eve Alfille was able to view some of these during a photo shoot at Milwaukee’s Natural History Museum.

On September 22, a panel of jewelry designers will reveal how, in the same way as Cartier with the Peregrina, they face the dilemmas of inheritance: How to redesign unworn pearls for today’s world? What to do with pearls you don’t wear? 

And finally, on November 11, our last meeting of 2012 will be a hands-on workshop. Special techniques will be shared to create jewelry with pearls and gems; this will be a partial repeat of the popular workshop Pearl Society founder Eve Alfille will lead in August at the Peninsula School of Arts, in Door County, Wisconsin. Bring any pearls you are thinking of redesigning.

As a special gesture to commemorate the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Eve J. Alfille Gallery, dues paid for the 2011 year will extend through 2012. The Pearl Society, which counts members throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, was founded in January 1990.

The American Pearl Rush: Its' Wisconsin Beginnings

Join us for our next meeting

"The American Pearl Rush: Its' Wisconsin Beginnings"

Sunday, March 6, 2011 from 3 pm to 5 pm

George Johnson, journalist and historian, has recently completed a major project detailing a seldom-described aspect of U.S. history. His scholarly article The American Pearl Rush: Its' Wisconsin Beginnings is to appear in the Wisconsin Magazine of History.

While the American Gold Rush has been thoroughly documented and romanticized, the equally sensational Pearl Rush, which occurred from August 1889 to 1915, has never been thoroughly described. Mr. Johnson sees himself as the successor of famed gemologist George Kunz, who, in his 1908 "Book of the Pearl" could only cover the beginning of the Wisconsin stampede to pearls.

What happened to those pearls is the subject of much speculation as well. Once the rush ended, pearling gave way to clamming, both for nacre to produce buttons for the world, and for nuclei to send to Japan for the nascent cultured pearl industry. But some natural pearls continued to be discovered, and some of those will be on view for this presentation. Mr. Johnson, who has another vocation as a restorer of native prairie, is an energetic and fascinating speaker. Copies of the January 2011 Wisconsin Magazine of History will be available to be signed by the author. To be held on Sunday, March 6, from 3 to 5 pm at the gallery.

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

Pearl Society presents - "Designing with Pearls"

Join us for our next meeting

"Designing with Pearls"

Sunday, January 23, 2011 from 3 pm to 5 pm

At the Eve J. Alfillé Gallery & Studio
623 Grove Street, Evanston
RSVP: 847-869-7920 or contact@evejewelry.com

Designing with pearls is a fascinating subject to most of our members. Pearl Society founder Eve Alfillé will share some of her approaches, and contrast them with those of some other designers who also seek out exotic pearls. In addition, this hands-on session will introduce some new techniques, such as ‘caged pearls’, that members may want to try. Materials and instruction will be available, but please reserve ahead as seating is limited.

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

Every Mollusc Forms A Pearl!

Every Mollusc Forms A Pearl!

Well, maybe not all, but according to recent Pearl Society speaker Elisabeth Strack, the world is experiencing an explosion in the types of 'new' natural pearls now reaching notoriety – and the market.

Never have so many new types of  natural pearls been recognized and brought to the attention of pearl connoisseurs at one time. Ms Strack, author of the definitive work "Pearls" and an internationally  recognized expert with a laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, presented a masterful, well-documented catalog of the new pearls together with their host shell at the October 12, 2010 meeting of The Pearl Society.

But many of the new pearls may not be immediately attractive to those who wish to enhance womanly charms with a bright pearly luster.

When I first beheld "Lion's Paw" pearls a few years ago in Tucson, their violetish color and absence of nacre did not  really impress.  I knew they were produced by the pecten shell, the one claimed by every Shell gas station. Yes, most of those pearls were round, but they were small, and  did not even possess the charm of a  good conch pearl, with its mysterious flame structure.  But the fire had been lit.

And now every one went back to search, and see if maybe they did have some sort of rare, unknown calcareous concretion, as the GIA calls such non-nacreous pearls, lying forgotten in a drawer.

Consider the Quahog shell:  it is best known for the wampum old American Indian societies fashioned for ornament and currency. Quahog mussels live off the  New England coast. But a couple of years ago someone brought out  already- known but unappreciated Quahog pearls that their grandmothers might have worn in a humble pin.

The Pearl Society then received numerous anxious calls:" I found a Quahog purple and white pearl, it's in an old pin from my family in Connecticut, how much is it worth?"

The fire was blazing, and visions of potential fortunes danced in the firelight.  A pearl's price, like that of any gem, depends on how many takers exist, and how high they are willing to bid. Therefore, the value of all such little known, and newly-publicized pearls is in flux, at least for the moment.

But enthusiasts are searching, and  some collectors are beginning to reveal the rarities they had concealed until this moment.  We heard about Cassis pearls, from the bright orange cassis shell, blue mussel pearls, and many, many others. At times it seemed as Ms Strack spoke, indeed, as though 'Every Mollusc forms a Pearl"!
 
Eve J. Alfille
October 16, 2010

Pearl Sleuth: Tracing the Origins of Natural Pearls, October 12, 2010

Join us for our next meeting:

"Pearl Sleuth: Tracing the Origins of Natural Pearls"

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 from 7 pm to 9 pm
at the Eve J. Alfillé Gallery & Studio
623 Grove Street, Evanston, Illinois 60201
RSVP: 847-869-7920 or contact@EveJewelry.com

Elizabeth Strack of Hamburg Germany, noted pearl expert and author of the book "Pearls" will be back to speak about the origins of natural pearls on Tuesday, October 12th from 7pm to 9pm.

The meeting will be Tuesday, October 12, 2010 from 7 pm to 9 pm
at the Eve J. Alfillé Gallery & Studio
623 Grove Street, Evanston, Illinois 60201 • 847-869-7920

Please reserve now! Call: 847-869-7920 or E-mail: contact@EveJewelry.com 

Pearl Society Feature by Diane Alfille:

From Rice Krispie to Soufflé Pearls!

You have heard of “Rice Krispie” pearls, “Corn” pearls, “Potato” pearls, “Born Again” pearls and even “Fireball” pearls, all descriptive names for the many different shapes of Chinese Cultured Freshwater pearls. In fact, though, rather than different shapes, they actually represent the different phases of freshwater pearl culturing in China as they have evolved their pearl culturing techniques over the years since the early to mid 1970’s. I remember buying my first strand of crinkled little freshwater pearls when I was living in Los Angeles. They were drilled longwise, so the strand was light and thin, and looked best when layered with at least one other necklace. When I started my first job out of college I received an interesting necklace from my mother, Eve Alfillé, which mixed sections of silvery pearls with dyed silvery-black ones punctuated by a few sections of side-drilled creamy keshi pearls. In fact, I still have it & occasionally wear it layered with other interesting freshwater pearls. The early very thin “rice krispie” pearls entered the market and rather quickly multiplied until they were everywhere! You likely owned at least one such strand yourself. Later, as Chinese pearl farming evolved the pearls became a little bit fuller and as the years went by, eventually more rounded.

As many of you already know, pearl culturing began years and years ago with the use of lead Buddahs implanted in oysters which, if not rejected & jettisoned by the sea creature, would later become coated with nacre and then retrieved by divers. Nacre is the substance secreted by a mollusk to protect itself from foreign invaders or debris lodged inside their shell. Salt water culturing using a sphere of shell from American rivers and streams, carefully placed inside an oyster together with a piece of donor tissue from an oyster of the same species, was developed and perfected in the mid 20th century by a few pearling pioneers, including Mikimoto of Japan.

In the case of freshwater pearl culturing, a piece of mantle tissue from another donor mussel of the same species was intentionally placed inside the mussel to precipitate the growth of a pearl. This allowed freshwater pearls a special distinction: they were made up of 100% nacre, the mantle tissue would dissolve and in its place a pearl would begin to form. The pearl farmers and technicians usually inserted multiple pieces of tissue into various places in the mussels so they could grow many pearls inside one shell.

In the quest to create round pearls from mussels in China’s lakes & rivers, to compete with the Japanese saltwater Akoya oyster pearls (the kind a young lady received as her first strand of pearls in graduated sizes) the Chinese kept trying new techniques. Finally they were able to achieve more rounded pearl shapes, but these were only round in one dimension– the bottom of the pearls remained fairly flat. These became known as “Corn” pearls, at first very tiny, later grown to sizes as big as 9-10 millimeters as we entered the new millenium. And, as they worked to grow round freshwater pearls, they also created a shape that was more like a potato, elongated and rounded but with a flat bottom where the pearl grew against the mussel’s shell.

Time went on and finally the growers tried “seeding” their pearls with a pearl from an earlier harvest. This still allowed the pearl to be 100% nacre. And the Chinese freshwater pearls became larger. Much, much larger! The Chinese weren’t talking, but world pearl experts became suspicious & started examining the pearls with radiology and even dissection to try and learn how this was happening. The problem was one had to destroy some of these pricy and still rare large cultured freshwater pearls to determine how they were formed. Surprisingly, they found that the concentric rings of nacre (similar to the growth rings in trees) would sometimes completely change in color partway through the pearl. The exterior of the pearl might be white, but perhaps halfway through its development it appeared pink! This was very surprising – these pearls were formed by taking a previously harvested pearl and reimplanting it into a different mussel to grow a larger pearl! That is why they became known in the jewelry industry as “Born Again Pearls”. Also, it was suspected that some of the freshwater pearls which were reimplanted were inferior in appearance and may have been polished into a round shape prior to being reinserted, to be born again as larger & hopefully rounder pearls.

Another freshwater pearl phenomenon which created lots of excitement among jewelry designers, were wild, plump-bellied pearls with trailing “meteoric tail” shapes dubbed “fireball” pearls. These were bead-nucleated freshwater baroque pearls that looked like baroque pearls from the South Seas. These appeared on the pearl scene in 2006 and seem to have flamed out as the growers have learned to produce the more saleable round & off-round freshwater pearls, instead of the more unpredictable & interesting shapes designers covet. I have a pale pink strand that never fails to get noticed. Industry experts like our own Pearl Society founder, Eve Alfillé, believe that fireball pearls occurred because of the need for speed. Growers were rushing to get these large pearls onto the market. Instead of painstakingly inserting each nucleus into the exact right position, they were dropping the nuclei into the outer edges of the mussels’ mantle tissue where the pearls were more likely to form fireball shapes, going for speed and quantity.

Today you can find enormous cultured Chinese freshwater pearls in round to off round shapes in large sizes of 14- 15 millimeters, of fine luster & color. And now Chinese pearl growers have evolved the beautiful and exciting, enormous soufflé pearls.

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..