[jshepherd]

Here are a couple more you may enjoy.

[jshepherd]

Another strand. I was being creative over coffee this morning.

[jshepherd]

The big baroque story:

The main purpose of our trip to Zhuji was the procurement of new freshadama strands for an upcoming television show in the next couple of weeks. I cannot say what show it will be, but it is one that you all know well. Yeah Zeide, that one - finally. This took a lot of time as we needed several thousand strands.

Well, we finished up a day early (and I say "we" because I brought Mia from my office) and I decided to start searching for large baroques. The farmers are currently harvesting pearls so it was actually quite difficult. They were not yet separated. We spent most of the day pawing through fresh harvests to find suitable pearls. We were literally lucky to find one that worked per thousand on the separator (large from small). We ended up with only about a kilo of pearls in the 12mm range (up to 14mm). The pieces that I put together this morning came from that bag of pearls. Unfortunately this means we will only be able to make 5 or 6 decently matched strands.

We were only able to find one company in Zhuji that had already separated a large lot of bigger-size baroques. But they did not separate for quality, so we would have had to select the pearls one by one - not a big deal, except... the company was Tears of Angel. For those of you familiar with the big players out there, Tears of Angel is definitely in the upper echelons. The problem is, their prices are out in fantasy land. For example, they wanted 250RMB per pearl for selection of the large, free form white. We had already selected about 100 pieces just to ensure that it would be worthwhile to continue before we sat down to negotiate. Although the pearls were beautiful with intense orient, 250 is crazy - that is about $30 per pearl, or about $900 for a finished strand of 12-14mm baroques. For the colored pearls (like those in the photo) they wanted about 3x market price for selection.

Needless to say, after a bit of haggling we left their office in disgust - that was my first visit to Tears of Angel, and most certainly my last. The whole company name is:
Zhejiang Tears of Angel Jewellery Co. Ltd. (stay away unless you are ready to overpay!)

Because it was our last day in Zhuji I settled on the selected lot, left a couple of dozen pieces with a friend of mine there, and carried the rest home. My friend promised to comb through all her new material as it comes in to collect the real baroque gems.

So, I am going to be putting together a few teaser strands but will not likely put them up for sale. I am just learning to match them and playing with different color combinations for now.
The picture is of the two of us separating the baroques at Tears of Angel. I am working on the colors, Mia is separating the whites.

[jshepherd]

To give you more of an idea of the large number of pearls we combed through to find the pieces I did carry back, here is the large-size harvest lot.

[jshepherd]

It actually did have a lot of fancy colors. They just do not come out well in the photo. But the colors were extremely good, actually. In fact, the colors on the 2 strands I matched this morning were actually much more intense than they appear in the picture as well - I am not the office photographer But those strands did not come from the first picture - we did not buy any of those pearls because I was not willing to be ripped off even for a sample.

Here is a pic I just cut out for another picture of Mia and myself separating at TOA. This is the "keep" pile that was directly in front of me to the left of my hand (my left) in the first picture. They may be a bit hard to make out as I cut the pic from a large picture. You can see that there were indeed a lot of fancy. More peach than not, but I really only selected the cream of the crop when it came to those.

[Valeria101]

Ms. Bell must be having a field day!

Those piles of pearls make quite a sight... (link)

[jshepherd]

She might be referring to Tara Bell, our lead designer. But the lady in the photos is Mia Mesa, our director of retail operations.

In the picture with four of us you also see David Nemani from Bella Findings in Los Angeles, and an long-time Chinese friend of mine from Hangzhou that spent a couple of days with us.

[Valeria101]

Must be losing it... I was indeed referring to the lead jewelry designer at PearlParadise (apologies if out of line...). And the picture down the link was supposed to convey some sense of wonder infront of them baskets of colored freshwater pearls. You must be used to the sight, I am not

[MABE BRAZIL]

Originally Posted by jshepherd

This is the "keep" pile that was directly in front of me to the left of my hand (my left) in the first picture. They may be a bit hard to make out as I cut the pic from a large picture. You can see that there were indeed a lot of fancy. More peach than not, but I really only selected the cream of the crop when it came to those.

Hi Jeremy,
this large barroque pearl are drilled ? I am looking for freshwater barroque to make a little museum to my company, just one or three. Is possible to buy this amount with good prices? The objective is only to ilustrate the kins/forms of pearls can attained.
Regards

Ricardo

[DFrey]

Hi Jeremy,
I have to pipe up and say I also love the colors of the pearls in the photos. I noticed that in your "keeper" pile of baroques there are a number of pieces with one flat side. Is this something that we have to accept when selecting baroques for strands? i don't mind it so much when using single pearls or pairs because I usually put them in a gold cup or some form of metal backing to accomodate a post for settng and then you don't see it. I am however still trying to sort out the flat back thing for strands, because some of them are always going to show when a string is worn. You have seen many more baroques than I have, whats you take on this?

Dfrey

[Rosomane]

Teaser is an apt choice of words.

I like them, although I'd like them better around my neck!

I'm partial to jewelry that looks edible and those look like candy, must be the colors although some whites look like lumps of sugar to me...mmmm.

[jshepherd]

Ricardo,

Email me your address and I will send you a few pieces.

Anna,

No big deal. I even get them confused some times

Dfrey,

That is most of the challenge, actually. You are right, the pieces with the flat backs are not suitable for strands. But, what you are seeing in the picture is not really as it appears. None of the pearls I had selected (save for a couple or truly exotic colors) had a "flat black". Yes, a flattened side, but I know exactly what you are talking about - not the rough flat spot. All the flattened edges on those pearls were a bit more rounded and not less (to any great extent) than the other side. These are perfectly suitable for a nice strand.