[Caitlin]

How to use up the odds and ends after the perfect shaped pearls are gone:

Not all pearls are the lovely gems we see offered by the various retail dealers who contribute to this site, whose classic designs are the mainstay of the "pearls as fine jewelry" market. 99% of the pearls do not meet this grade, yet have other appealing attributes.

The following link reminded me of the display of Mexican pearls at the American Pearl exhibit at the AGTA show in Tucson this past Feb. They were tiny pearls of all different shapes and sizes, very irregular, yet beautiful when all jumbled together. As I sorted through them (there was only about a tablespoonful) I imagined them as an illusion necklace. An illusion necklace made out of natural Mexican pearls would have been fairly sparsely laden with only a tablespoon of pearls to go around. Now here is that same idea carried out in the all-flexible freshwater pearl

Following are links to a great design that uses several kinds and colors of irregular, tiny, and nugget shaped freshwater pearls in a lavishly piled on illusion necklace. It is the necklace equivalent of a loose jumble of pearls.

http://spiritofpearl.com/Action.lass...810046&-Search

This link is to a page with several versions of the necklace including a couple with various little gemstones as well as the fw pearls mixed in:

http://spiritofpearl.com/Action.lass...ds=500&-search

This picture is the biggest version of the one I like. I am not sure I like seeing all the plastic threads though!

http://spiritofpearl.com/action.lass...810046&-search

Dear mr. Williams,
they have been making these necklaces for a long time already in the Beijing pearl market for near to nothing.
You just have to find the right girl to do it for you and insist that she uses many small pearls instead of little bigger ones.
I've been selling these in Holland quite a lot, but now it seems that here the market is a bit saturated with this kind of necklaces...
And I sell them, 30 strands, for around 75,- euro.
Marjan

[Caitlin]

Hi Marjan

So nice to see you here on this forum. Glad you are reading these old threads! I wrote that at the same time as other posts referring to the Mexican Sea of Cortez pearls. Sorry it was not clear to a newbie. I didn't think of that at the time.

In my response, I was referring to an idea for how to use up the extremely tiny, rare and odd-shaped Mexican pearls. A tablespoon sized collection of small maybe 25-35 Mexican pearls (such as I saw at the American Pearl Company booth at the gem show) would cost a fortune ($25 a gram?) and they would not match each other at all. Than what do you do, if you want to wear them?

The imaginary necklace I have in mind using these pearls would sell for thousands of dollars so I was also having second thoughts about using plastic thread at all.

BTW Caitlin is pronounced Kate Lynn and I am an old lady.

[jshepherd]

Caitlin,

Do you mean 'The American Pearl Company' or 'American Pearl'? I think The American Pearl Company deals in those types of pearls, but as far as I understand American Pearl does not.
The American Pearl Company is the one out of Camden, Tennessee. American Pearl is based in New York.

[Caitlin]

Duly noted and edited- I forgot about that Co in NYC- they had a booth too so the distinction is important. Thanks

Hi Caitlin,
The language barrier, and, since I'm new on this forum, I mixed you up with this ex Pan Am captain (forgot his name, got to get my thing right) on this forum of which I've seen the pictures.
I understood your point, but I just was a bit surprised that you hadn't seen these necklaces before.
Sorry for the Mr.
Marjan (old lady too)