INTERESTING BITS ABOUT PEARLS

In the Louvre is one of the oldest pearl necklaces dating back to the fifth century BC which is believed to have belonged to a Persian queen.

Pearls have been used as a form of money and you could pay your taxes in this way.  Pearls have been used to decorate clothing as well as adornment in the shape of earrings, necklaces, tiaras and bracelets.   Nero liked to roll around on a bed of pearls.  Pearls were also used in crowns and thrones and carpets such as the famous bejewelled pearl carpet of Baroda, originally commissioned as a gift for the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad.

Obsession with pearls is well recorded such as Queen Elizabeth 1 who wore her pearls on her deathbed.   Julius Caesar gave Servilia a pearl.  Military campaigns were financed by the sale of pearl earrings.  Caligula gave his horse a string of pearls!   Richard Burton gave Liz Taylor a pearl bought at auction in 1969.

There are some lovely myths associated with pearls such as the one of Lord Krishna who defied the seas to gather pearls for a wedding gift for his daughter.  When banished from Eden, the tears of Eve were pearls according to Hebrew Legend.   Japanese myth  refer to pearls being tears of joy and in another Adam and Eve cried a lake of tears  which were orbs(pearls), more white orbs from Eve than black orbs from Adam because he was more in control of his emotions.   Ancient Christians thought that a shell surfaced the sea to harvest the light of the sun, the stars and the moon to make pearls. Polynesian legend say that the God of Peace and Fertility came to earth on a rainbow to deliver a black pearl to humans in order to promote peace and fertility.  The Chinese thought pearls came with the rain from the spit of fighting dragons.   Pearls are believed to be the Mother Gem of the Sea and as such are sacred to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.

Pearls have fetched large sums of money as for example in November 1999, Christie's Geneva sold a single-strand pearl necklace, which belonged to Marie-Antoinette, Princess of Hungary and Bohemia, Arch duchess of Austria and Queen of France, and later by the American Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. Comprising forty-one graduated pearls, measuring approximately 8.50 to 16.35 mm, this superb single-strand necklace sold for a then world record of $1,450,000.

Five years later in November 2004, Christie's Geneva offered a two-strand pearl necklace--double the number of pearls and equal in size to the Marie Antoinette/Hutton necklace--which sold for $3,128,520.

Pearls are evident in many of the great paintings housed in museums and galleries around the world.

Great powers have been attributed to pearls such as bringing love, wealth and prosperity to the wearer.   In therapy pearls are thought to help you in letting go of the past or old ideas that are no longer valid.  

An artist with an eye for  pearls, was the seventeenth-century Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer whose absolute masterwork, 'Girl With the Pearl Earring' captures the precise realism of the gem.

Elizabeth and display of 'pearl mania'!

Link to wealth of further information about pearls:-

http://www.pearl-guide.com/pearl-world-journal.shtml

KNOTS, KNOTTING, THREADS AND KNOTS IN A TWIST

Finding a course in making necklaces.........minefield....reviewed many but found that they were mostly for the hobbyist.  I needed to be able to string my pearls to a professional standard.   Books, videos, networking and asking many questions that were answered reluctantly led me to a point where I could start making my first string of pearls.........

Full time day job and 18 months of evenings and weekends dedicated to my pearl stringing exercise......I had no idea how many ways silk thread could knot itself, snag, break and reduce me to tears of frustration.  Do I wax the thread, different hole sizes and using the wrong thread size,  enlarging holes, finishing a necklace, ends attaching to clasp not even,  having made a knot between each pearl only to find I missed a couple, unable to undo a knot and having to start again, making a decision to make a necklace with no knots separating the individual pearls... wrong decision....learning to gauge the amount of pearls required to produce a necklace of a particular length....16inches or 18inches... smaller diameter pearls versus larger.....calculating the increase in length when putting a knot between each pearl.

By the end of this learning curve, I had acquired glasses,  binocular magnifiers, a whole range of jewellers tools and had probably strung in the region of 600 necklaces.  

So what.......the proof of the success of my efforts will only be evident when I can convert this to a saleable product!

PAPERWORK FOUND AMONGST THE PEARLS

Number One Son visited and left, none the wiser that his mother had spent a small fortune on the off chance that she could create an income and believe me, I managed to walk past that hall cupboard as if it never existed.

Eventually I plucked up the courage, pulled out all the boxes and started sorting the pearls.  The colours were all very muted and had a depth that made me think of the double strand of pearls my mother used to wear 50 years ago when I was a young girl.  I found that I started stopping at every pearl jewllery counter to see if I could find similar pearls.  The only time I saw something similar was amongst antique or vintage jewellery dealers stock.

For weeks my sittingroom floor was covered in various piles of pearls, eventually I go to the last box which also had a couple of envelopes and some written notes that appeared to be stock records.  At last I knew and had confirmation that I had a huse stock of vintage pearls.  The envelopes contained two invoices from a Spanish company which explained the Spanish stock references written on each parcel of pearls.  The invoices were dated 1941 and 1940 and the invoices made reference to the fact that due to the war the shipment contained no silk in the way of ribbon or thread.  So although I cannot confirm that these pearls were part of the consignment mentioned in these invoices, at least it gave me an indication as to the era from which my pearls came.

During the war wool, cotton, linen, rayon, silk and nylon was commandeered by the government for military uniforms and supplies.


I still had no idea how I was to turn these strings of pearls into necklaces with a clasp....something you could actually wear!

PEARLS PEARLS PEARLS

Three hours later,  I was the happiest bunny imaginable.....hundreds of pearls in perfect condition.....all graduated.....from the tiniest little 2mm pearl to 5mm centre pearl or starting with a 4mm end pearl to a 8mm centre pearl.  Here are couple of photographs....I know ....no laughing please.....the colour variations are so subtle.... but here goes......

By this time I had also noticed that the individual packages/wrapped pearls were all labeled in Spanish.  At a geuss I thought that there was probably about 2000 strings of pearls including what I could salvage.


Then came the inevitable price question.  Pauline,  who is a supplier of all manner of beads to the jewellery trade, was not interested in supplying these pearls to her customers as the stock was limited and her customer base required vast quantities and ongoing supply.  This was in my favour and after some haggling we agreed a price.  


Agreeing a price was in my case definitely not the same as having access to the ready monies.  The next couple of days were spent exhausting all avenues of  credit after which I hotfooted it back to Birmingham to buy my pearls.

Took delivery and took my booty back home. 

Then the shock of what I had done hit home.....I had just spent a small fortune on buying pearls.  I did not know a thing about making necklaces.  Oh sure I had spent a considerable amount of time in the jewellery trade and yes I knew my stones but this was a different baby altogether.



For a few weeks I kept sidestepping the pearls in the hallway.....I did not want to look too closely because I had a sinking feeling that this may well be one of my most costly mistakes to date.  


The next move was too hide them as my son was due home for a weekend and I had no idea how I was going to explain what I intended doing with all these pearls.  All the pearls were put to the back of the cupboard under the stairs and that is where they stayed for the next four months.

PEARL OPPORTUNITY GROWS

Having lost heart at the opening of the first box of pearls, I plodded on.....the second box appeared to have some pearls sorted and a few strings of pearls threaded on cotton.  These pearls would have to be rethreaded onto silk thread and a clasp added.   Nothing yet to indicate that I could start a viable business with this factory clearance find.

More of the boxes first opened.....

 

The pearls are perfect individually but there were not sufficient pearls of any one colour or size that could be sold as a jewellery range.  Good quality that could used in making earrings but I felt that complete strings of pearls in quantity would be needed for me to turn this into a business venture.

Plod on.  Box 8 produced what look like a promise of paydirt.  Care had gone into wrapping these pearls in protective tissue and brown paper.

Unwrapping the first packet,  what a pleasure, perfect condition, perfectly graduated and all the same colour.

Every box after this contained a range of pearls.....pearls matching in colour, graduation size and length.  There were 29 different variations  of strings of pearls numbering from 30 to 600 strings per range.

I fell in love.

PEARLS AND OPPORTUNITY

Retirement is looming so some years back  I started exploring ways and means of developing my  'SECOND LIFE' - I could not envisage a future of not doing any work at all.   

Opportunity knocked hard and loud when friends in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter contacted me and told me about pearls that they had been offered by a factory clearance contractor.  Intrigued, I was on the M1 within the hour.

In the storeroom was a pile of old boxes of different shapes and sizes. 

The first box I opened was a jumble of loose pearls and strings of pearls knotted and entangled and  all of different shapes and sizes and colours. 

  

VINTAGE COLOURS

creams of all varieties....rose creams,  velvety creams,  deep creams, metallic creams......

With a sinking heart, it was difficult to imagine the hours it would take to sort the pearls by sizes and colours however I felt I should look at all the boxes as my friends clearly felt that these pearls were just 'the opportunity' I was looking for.

Opportunity may well come in different shapes and sizes but clearly this was not the case in this instance.

INTRODUCTION TO ME AND MY PASSIONS

My first real introduction to the jewellery trade was when I went to work for a diamond mining company in a small village in South Africa.    The company paid for me to study gemology at the Gemological Institute of America based in Santa Monica, Los Angeles at that time.  

Marriage, family and life led to me moving and setting up home in England where I worked for  a  supplier of fittings for the jewellery manufacturing industry.   It was the most wonderful experience and for many years I attended jewellery fairs all over Europe and in England, Scotland and Wales.   

It was an incredible privilege to see the work of so many talented goldsmiths and silversmiths.  Of  course, the mass produced jewellery ranges were of note too.

My tastes are now firmly rooted in the appeal of ethnic jewellery which satisfies my need to own something that is handmade however I am also a lover of pearls.   Friends constantly tease that this gulf in taste is akin to my personality - from rough, unhewn, assertive go-getter to an about face complete 'girly girl' personality.   

This blog will hopefully be a place for me to meet with likeminded people who are interested in coloured stones and the history of beads and vintage pearls.