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!