[Caitlin]

What is the story on faceted FW pearls? http://www.agrainofsand.com/Beads-Fa...Pearls-58.html for some pictures
Here is something top of the line faceted: http://www.jewelryexpert.com/CATALOG...tian-Pearl.htm
How do they do it? What kind of treatment make the cut pearls so lustrous?

And I suppose the irridescence is due to metal vapor depostion?
http://coolbead.com/
It looks like more and more poor quality cfwp will be subjected to these treatments to "fabulize" them in the future.

Metal vapor depostion has a big future. Not only can it provide the "mirror" in the akoyas, it can provide orient in otherwise lackluster pearls of all kinds. I bet Tahitian that pass through Japan get just this treatent. Because it really does "fabulize" the pearls!

And look what it can do to shell beads!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...EWA%3APIC&rd=1 NEW! Fabulized Multi-Color Shell Nugget Beads! Ka-BOOM!

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Caitlin,

Faceted pearls are just what the name says: Pearls that have been faceted. In order to be faceted, the pearls need thick nacre. Originally the idea was conceived by a Japanese company (Komatsu) to make lackluster akoyas more attractive, but there were not enough thick-nacre akoyas around, so the company started faceting Tahitians and South Seas. In freshwater pearls there are two common grades of faceting the one typically used in dyed potato pearls I may call "hacked at" where the pearls look like they were run through a food processor and "fine facetting" typically used for already well shaped pearls of fine natural color and water. The former are hideous and the latter are amazing. In contrast to what some authors (e.g. Antionette Matlins) suggest, you cannot really make pearls rounder or the cerclé disappear by faceting them. Au contraire, cerclé and most other flaws (except maybe piqué) go too deep to be eradicated by competent faceting and thus stand out even more than before when faceted. Anodonta woodiana pearls (naturally black freshwater cultured pearls) benefit most from such treatment resulting in a product that looks like faceted black opal beads of the Lightening Ridge type.

Zeide

[Caitlin]

Hi Zeide
I think I provided examples of your 2 grades of facetting.

I actually like some of the ones from coolbead.com- but it is the metal vapor deposited iridescence I like even more than the facetting. This has got to be the future for many lackluster FW pearls.....just add the vapor metal deposition of your choice and whamo! Fabulized pearls!.

Until you mentioned it on this forum, I never saw a hint anywhere that metal vapor desposition was being used to enhance pearls. Though I have a labradorite and have seen other stones that have it. Now I see the "silver" in SSP and akoyas and I dare say the Tahitians that got educated in Japan acquired their "polish" from just such treatments. Is there anyway to tell if Tahitians have been fabulized?

Wouldn't you want to lacquer the pearls afterwards to protect the metal vapor deposits?

(I am thinking really fine quality clear lacquer as used on fine stringed instruments, only updated by Monsanto or Dow or whomever.... or of course, really cheap lacquer on the miserable ones.)

[Caitlin]

Anodonta woodiana pearls (naturally black freshwater cultured pearls) benefit most from such treatment resulting in a product that looks like faceted black opal beads of the Lightening Ridge type.

Do you have a picture of one? I imagine these are too fine to come in strands?

That Tahitian one has burned itself on my memory. Now I'd like to see more.

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Caitlin,

You can lacquer vapor-deposition-treated pearls but you do not have to. The surface structure of the aragonite keeps the deposition layer well in place and they will wear off together eventually. As far as fabulized Akoyas, Tahitians and South Sea pearls go, their high resulting luster and color rating makes them so expensive that most buyers of them keep them locked up and only wear them maybe 10 times in their lives.

In fabulized freshwater pearls, that is a different matter, as those are typically used in fashion jewelry and given some heavy wear. Those are usually dipped in "diamond paint" which leaves the surface treament very resilient and durable. The process is still a touch on the expensive side so do not expect those for just a few dollars a strand. The really cheap kind is probably still just coated with some mardi-gras-beads paint.

Please note that expensive here is a relative term. The shell beads from Cool Beads are probably a testmarket run. Expect prices for fabulized pearls to go up as the process finds market acceptance but nowhere near the "upscale kind." I suppose the treatment trend will also be thicker layers of niobium on the fabulized freshwaters and lighter layers of gold and rhodium for the "high-end." When the treatment becomes widely known and accepted, the Mystiquery sellers will probably argue that the precious metal deposition is just so much more expensive (which it is not) that it adds value and their faithful followers will run to get their precious Fabulitians while they can.

Zeide

[Caitlin]

Thank you for a post worth a million dollars!


I have been Googling faceted pearls and on page after page, it is a way to try to get some appeal into those endless tons and tons of oval cfw pearls.. .

Of the two, treatments- facetting and vapor metal depostions, I am a goner for the latter. I might even buy one of those facetted oval strands of cfwp, if they fabulize it to have orient that moves around and produces third colors and stuff.

Now I want a shell bead strand like coolbead.com's fabulized ones, but with more abalone colors.......

[Caitlin]

Fabulitians

Got it!

hey..... what would a coat of niobium do on that fine imperial jade? Would it finally attain the iridescent blues of the back of the kingfisher's neck? Now THAT would be some jade I might look at.

[Caitlin]

Hi Zeide
I can't get a good hit on "diamond paint" Please elaborate on it. Can I get a bottle somewhere?

What would be a good brand name for the mardi gras quality varnish?

I have some pearls that really need fabulizing! Can I do it with paint? Like rub in some pearlized paint from Michael's? Then coat it with mardi gras polish?
I hope you know of more effective paint or coatings than that idea!.

[jshepherd]

Pearl World Journal, Fall 2005

Another query we received concerned faceted pearls. It seems a dealer had a quantity of blemished Tahitian SSPs on hand that were difficult to sell, and he wanted to look into having them faceted. We had run an article on this process some time ago concerning two elderly gentlemen in Kobe, Japan, who laboriously hand faceted pearls with ancient, wooden tools and techniques. As we looked into this further, we found a recent Colored Stone article about a firm in Tokyo that also specializes in faceting pearls:
"Komatsu Diamond" read the sign above the booth at International Jewellery Tokyo, where I first met father and son Kazuo and Kazuhito Komatsu. But it was their pearls, not their diamonds, that caught my eye.
Komatsu started as a diamond–cutting factory in 1967, but– who says the Japanese don’t innovate? - in the early 1980s, company president Kazuo developed a technique that’s changed the way people think about pearls: pearl faceting.
Inspiration for the faceting came when a customer asked Komatsu if he could help him find a way to add value to blemished pearls that were otherwise difficult to sell. Experimentation followed. "But the marks from the blemishes remain, no matter how much you cut away. And bad color remains," explains son Kazuhito. "If faceted, one of these pearls might sparkle, but it still won’t have any luster."
In the ‘80s, round freshwater pearls were still scarce, and South Sea pearls were very expensive in Japan, so initially the company experimented with its techniques on akoyas, the only pearls then available in quantity in Japan. The most difficult part was figuring out how to polish the ultra-thin, soft nacre, and it remains their biggest challenge today.
"Every day we’ve tried new things, and little by little we’ve realized, ‘If we do this, it shines a little more, and if we do that, it will shine a little more,’" describes Kazuhito. "We didn’t have any books on the subject, and there wasn’t anyone to teach us how to do it, so there was nothing for us to do but try everything we could think of. If we got as pearl facet to shine a little, we thought we’d made a bit of progress."
It was 1992 before they completed their first samples, and they unveiled them that year at Internationally Jewellery Tokyo.
The technique for faceting pearls, for which Kazuo holds a patent, is based on his experience with diamond cutting and polishing, adjusted to cope with the softness of pearl nacre. "The technique is based on diamond cutting and polishing; they are fundamentally the same," he says. Part of Kazuo’s research included adapting tools for pearl cutting and creating new ones to polish the pearls.
"Polishing the pearls is terribly difficult. In general, the cutting is definitely more difficult than for stones," recalls Kazuhito. A total of four cutters in the com¬pany are qualified to do the pearl faceting. All started out first cutting diamonds and other gemstones, then moved to pearls.
"The end product has a mysterious shine to it," says Kazuo. "Even after thinking everything through and researching it for years, I was surprised that they came out so beautifully.
"Just like the facet of a cut stone, the face of a pearl facet shines," says Kazuhito. "The difference is that the nacre of the pearl consists of layers, and each of these layers has a natural luster that shines as well."
The special feature brings with it a fundamental challenge, however. "If you make a mistake cutting a stone, it is still stone down to the core, and you can, theoretically, ‘fix’ your mistake," he explains. "But if you accidentally cut down to the nucleus at the core of a pearl, then the pearl has no value."
Though the company can facet almost any kind of pearl, Kazuhito emphasizes that they cannot change a pearl’s shape.
Baroque pearls’ irregular forms make them difficult to cut with a symmetrical pattern, and thus the company works almost exclusively with round or drop-shaped pearls. Because the cutter calculates the angles before working, round pearls are somewhat easier to work with. Each drop pearl is different, so each one’s angles must be separately calculated.
The company can do "mirror ball" cuts (with square facets), but their favored facet patterns look like flowers from above, made with either triangular or diamond-shaped facets.
Experience has shown that working on fine-quality pearls yields the best product and the best customer satisfaction. As a result, even before cutting, these pearls are not inexpensive. However, since the company buys loose pearls and strands in bulk, it can keep costs down, to the extent that their pearls are not much more expensive than unfaceted pearls of similar quality, adds Kazuhito.
Most of the pearls the company works with are from the South Seas, particularly Tahitian black pearls, which currently represent about 70 percent of production. The larger sizes are easier to work with and show off the technique; moreover, Tahitian pearls are relatively inexpensive, and the end product sells well.
"But akoyas have the best luster, even now. It’s also the most delicate, because the layers are so thin," Kazuhito points out. Before cutting an akoya pearl, the cutter looks inside the drill hole to see whether or not there is enough nacre thickness to facet the pearl; if not, the cutter chooses another. There’s no standard measurement for thickness, though: Cutters learn through experience to tell whether there’s enough nacre for faceting or not.
Currently, the Komatsu factory produces about 1,000 faceted pearls a month, of varying sizes. There are no plans to increase production, primarily because of the time and investment required for training.
The company chooses pearls to facet together with its clientele; some customers provide their own pearls, while the company can supply pearls for others based on size, color, budget, and selling price. Over time, ongoing clients learn what kinds of pearls look best with facets and which ones sell well.
Most of Komatsu’s customers for faceted pearls are wholesalers, though there are jewelry designers as well, including some Italian brand-name designers and someone Kazuhito terms "a well-known designer in the U.S." Outside of Japan, the United States, and Italy, the company also sells its faceted pearls to clients in Taiwan and Bangkok, Thailand. Most customers are firms that do not specialize in pearls, suggesting that this innovative technique has opened up some new markets for pearls.
Overseas customers tend to like faceted Chinese freshwater pearls.
The Komatsu company cuts these in sizes from 5 mm for pierced earrings to 9 mm and 10 mm for necklaces and 11 mm for rings and pendants.
In Japan, freshwaters have a strong image of being "cheap pearls," Kazuhito says, making them more difficult to sell to the domestic market. But they’re still useful for niche jewelry that is difficult to create with akoya and South Sea pearls. For example, a necklace made entirely of 10-mm pearls would be difficult to obtain and prohibitively expensive if made with akoya or South Sea pearls. When done in freshwaters, it sells because of its uniqueness.
Though Kazuo was the first to facet pearls, the popularity of this new look has spurred other companies to experiment with the technique. There are Chinese and Australian manufacturers who also facet pearls, but the Komatsus aren’t worried about the competition.
"Their thinking is totally different from ours, as are the quality of their materials and their cutting," says Kazuhito. "It’s a completely different product."

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Caitlin,

I don't know about commercial supplies of diamond paint but it is widely used to up color and clarity grades of substandard diamonds. I guess a good crafts shop may have some "thin glassy lacquer" they can recommend for the purpose.

As far as fabulizing on a budget is concerend, you can probably find various colors of metallic spray paint (in atomizers and pressurized cans without FCCs) in the model-building sections of your local hardware stores. Just line up a bunch of strands and give them light dustings in various metallic colors rolling the strands after each color application and when you're finished with that, spray them with acryilic sealant lacquer for models. I think that's how they do it in China.

Zeide

[Caitlin]

Hi Jeremy
Thank you so much for that elaboration! Very interesting article. Especially about the effect facetting has on the overall shine.

The article dos not mention the hash and slash jobs being done on Chinese CFWP, but even they seem to benefit with more shine- or is that just polish?

[Caitlin]

I think that's how they do it in China.

Thanks Zeide.
Nothin like learning how they do it in China! The spray paint idea and the technique is a great tip. Great colors too.
Though I think I'll fool around with them on paper first, to see what I can learn there before I go to pearls, even lousy FW pearls.
Maybe do a shrine for the Great Goddess Mother of Pearl.....or maybe her sister, Abalone Shell.....

[Caitlin]

Here is a closeup of the B&B that I cropped. Itis a bit blurry, but that quality seems to help capture the iridesence in this case.

[Caitlin]

Anodonta woodiana pearls (naturally black freshwater cultured pearls) benefit most from such treatment resulting in a product that looks like faceted black opal beads of the Lightening Ridge type

Here is a picture of described faceted anodonta woodiana . Hard to get the colors. This necklace is also fetured in the My design thread.

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Caitlin,

Nice shot. Although it still does not show the woodsie colors, one can see quite well that the big center pearl is cream and not pink (even though it looks pink in real life) and its water.

Zeide