A helping hand in the Philippines

[knotty panda]

Hi all! I didn't really take the time to read the whole thread, so my method of distinguishing freshwater from south seas may already be addressed, but I look for the sheen. White SSPs definitely have a satin sheen to them. Beading quality freshwaters have practically no luster to them, while the higher quality freshwaters have a reflective quality to them. Telling the difference between GSSP and freshwaters is easier because it's easier to spot a dye job.

[Giselle]

Hi all,

I've been a silent spectator to this thread for a while and find all the information really useful as like all of you, I am highly interested in pearls. They're elegant, have a wonderful embellished history, and - you must agree with me - give ladies a classic look.

I live in Europe and grew up in the Philippines and believe south sea pearls have a huge niche in the jewelry industry in the country where I reside now (Scotland). However, as I know it shall entail an ample capital, I want to be able to actually KNOW pearls, and this desire to learn led me to this site.

I am a little staggered to hear that the freshwaters in Phils have been imported from China. Like many victims, I have allowed myself to be lured into Greenhills and purchase several strands of pearls I believed to have been acquired from actual Filipino waters. Is it true that only south sea pearls are the only type of pearls that could be farmed in Philippines?

[jshepherd]

While South Sea pearls are not the only pearls currently farmed in the Philippines, the freshwater pearls you purchased at Greenhills were undoubtedly Chinese freshwater pearls. There is no freshwater pearl production in the Philippines.

Pearls from the Philippines are almost exclusively grown in P. maxima - they are South Sea pearls. There has been some farming of P margaritifera (Black South Sea or Tahitian) and some use of the Pteria penguin in mabe pearl production.

This forum is filled with stories from people who have purchased freshwaters at that market in the Philippines. As mentioned before, there are even a couple of Web sites in the US featuring "Philippine" pearls that are all Chinese freshwater. It is sad really...

The truth is the Philippines are a large source of some of the world's most valuable pearls. The leading producer is Jewelmer. But the market for these pearls is outside the Philippines, so it is not likely one would stumble upon fine gems at a good price at Greenhills. The pearls are sold at international auction and via direct sale to wholesalers around the world - wholesalers who pay a lot of money. It would make no sense for the producers to piece-meal the pearls out at Greenhills.

[Giselle]

I was a little upset to hear it, really. I have always disliked the mentality of Filipinos to hang onto foreign goods and flog them as their own, heading towards misleading their own countrymen.

I was in Manila recently and visited the Greenhills market once again, and the Jewelmer store in Makati, eyes wide open at the actual pearls as someone now laden with pearl knowledge. SSP are beautiful pearls, that is an understatement, really. What are the price ranges for wholesaling south sea pearls?

[Jones]

just to inform you,

Since a while I have been staying on the island of Palawan and there are 11 companies operating on this island and from several sources I have heard there is a farm which produces freshwater pearls located next to the town of Taytay.

but I agree that almost all of the FWP which are for sales in the Philippines originate from China. . ..

[perlas]

Philippines may be starting to explore freshwater pearl production. I was able to watch a tv documentary last year regarding blister pearl production in a farm in Laguna (Luzon Island). The main business is actually fish farming and just doing the blister pearl production on the sides...

[jshepherd]

Since a while I have been staying on the island of Palawan and there are 11 companies operating on this island and from several sources I have heard there is a farm which produces freshwater pearls located next to the town of Taytay.

but I agree that almost all of the FWP which are for sales in the Philippines originate from China. . ..

The town of Taytay is known for South Sea pearl production. The main body of water is the sound which is saltwater, of course. Freshwater experiments could be occuring in Lake Danao.There is talk of of experimenting in Cardona as well. But experiments may or may not produce anything of value, and any real freshwater pearl production would in the very distant future.

There is no question just about every "Philippine" pearl at Greenhills is a Chinese pearl.

[pearlsofpalawan]

Hi. This is my first post in this forum. I am a Filipino residing in the Philippines. A couple of my friends and I are into small-time pearl jewelry business. My friends started selling pearl accessories for just over a year ago and I've only joined them two months ago. I know little about pearls so I still have a lot to learn about them.

My friends and I have complete trust on our source from Palawan because, as we have noted, the pearls we get are of same quality we see in department stores such as Rustan's, Jewelmer and other jewelry stores. We also took time to look at pearls from Quiapo and Greenhills and we know that what they have are not like what we are selling. What is confusing for me right now is, based on comments on this thread, why it is believed that there are no production of freshwater pearls in the Philippines?

[jshepherd]

...why it is believed that there are no production of freshwater pearls in the Philippines?

Because there isn't. The freshwater pearls in the Philippines are Chinese imports. All the strands of freshwater pearls coming out of the Philippines and sold to unsuspecting tourists and locals alike are from China.

[Caitlin]

If you know of a freshwater pearl production farm in the Philippines, by all means, please tell us about it. We've been looking for years.

[pearlsofpalawan]

If you know of a freshwater pearl production farm in the Philippines, by all means, please tell us about it. We've been looking for years.

Thank you for shedding light on this. We have been communicating with our source from Palawan through phone calls and text messages only and your comments made us realize that it is about time for us to personally go to where our source is. With all due respect, we really wish to prove you wrong, for our sake, hopefully we could get pictures of their production when we're there.

[jshepherd]

Pictures would be great. In fact, if you are going to make the trip, this is what it would take.

* A picture of a working freshwater pearl farm. Just a picture over the body of water would do it.

* A picture of the shells used in production. What are they? Hc, Hs, Cp?

* Any pictures of harvest or grafting would be great.

This would be a commercial enterprise and one that would have a name. Any business should be verifiable.

* A picture of a factory.

* A picture of pearls being processed (bleached, sorted, dyed, drilled, etc.)
This would also be a commercial enterprise so the company would have a name, especially because this is the company involved in the selling of the pearls.

I do not believe any of this exists in the Philippines. I have researched it myself, consulted a friend at GIA on this specific topic, checked with Elisabeth Strack and a friend in the Philippines. The response has always been the same. No commercial freshwater pearl production in the Philippines.

Because of the numerous claims I have seen on this board and different Web sites I recently contacted a South Sea pearl company in the Philippines; a company we all know but one which I have not been given permission to disclose. The response I received was very succinct. There are NO freshwater farms here and all the freshwater pearls are Chinese imports.

There are several reasons why, aside from the responses I have received, that I do not believe there is any freshwater pearl production in the Philippines.

* It would not be commercially viable. The Philippines could not hope to compete with China.

* The Philippines lack the lakes needed to farm on any real scale. It takes a lot of space to produce even a small number of commercially accepted, quality pearls. You cannot miss a freshwater pearl farming area because any area that produces enough to be noticed is covered with farms. Driving through China in even the smaller, family-farming areas that are not real producing areas is like driving through the corn in Nebraska. They are everywhere.

* I have never seen a picture from the Philippines of a factory or a farm, and one has never made its way to Google or any of the trade press in the US, Asia, or anywhere in the world that I know of. It would take a lot of collaboration and scientific research to make the industry viable (if there even exists the native shell), and I have seen no evidence of this. In fact, it has never even been mentioned to my knowledge.

* There are no wholesale freshwater pearl companies (dealing in materials) in the Philippines. The only Philippine pearl companies that come to any of the shows are South Sea. Why would these companies spend all this time and effort producing something they do not even sell? Freshwater pearls from the Philippines?! That would be like the Kasumi pearls from Japan. They would not be sold piecemeal from "this guy who is a friend of my cousin."

* Freshwater farms do not sell wholesale, they sell materials. Everything I have heard from "sellers" of Filipino fresh is that they buy from the farmers here and there. But that is impossible. The only way to buy freshwater pearls is to buy from a processor unless you have the ability to process yourself. If that is the case, you are a processor, a factory. You have a large building with temperature controlled rooms, teams of drillers, matchers, polishing equipment... a huge operation. One that is very easy to verify. This has never been done.

* The pearls that I have seen that are "from" the Philippines look like classic Chinese pearls. The treatments dyes are the same. Even the shapes (like coin pearls) are the same. How does a fledgling industry produce coin pearls? That takes advanced perliculture skill.

* All the pearls discussed on this board "from" the Philippines come with the same story. "I bought them from this guy that said..." Or, "the seller at Greenhills promised me..." Even Web sites have been developed around "that guy's" story Check out OceanGems.com, a guy in California selling Chinese freshwater and claiming they are all from the Philippines - he bought "that guy's" story, apparently. None of these sellers are industry people, however. They are opportunists that believe they have found something. They believed "that guy's" story. "That guy" often promotes the Chinese fresh as Filipino South Sea as well. We have seen that here before - several times.

I guess what it really boils down to is this: There has never been any real evidence of a freshwater pearl farm in the Philippines shown to me or anyone I have ever spoken to, and I have never talked to a single person in the industry that believes or has any evidence to the contrary. If there were evidence to the contrary why the big secret? It seems to me the only big "secret" is not much of a secret. These Filipino pearls actually come from China.

[Caitlin]

I hope you prove us wrong too!

But I am afraid your trusted source is fibbing. He either imports directly from China or buys from an importer. It is a huge fib that everyone in the Philippines wants to believe- so much so that importers lie to distributers who lie to retailers who lie to the public.

If you are told you can't visit the freshwater pearl farms or the processing plants, it is because there aren't any.

And be sure to look in your trusted source's garbage for plastic and tape-wrapped bags --from China!

[jshepherd]

Thank you for shedding light on this. We have been communicating with our source from Palawan through phone calls and text messages only and your comments made us realize that it is about time for us to personally go to where our source is. With all due respect, we really wish to prove you wrong, for our sake, hopefully we could get pictures of their production when we're there.

I am posting to just bump this thread to the top to see if "pearlsofpalawan" is out there. I see there have been new products added to the blog but the story is the same. I want to know if he/she ever did visit the supplier in Palawan.

Someone also mentioned to me after this post that they contacted OceanGems.com twice to ask them about their Chinese freshwater pearls being advertised as Philippine pearls and received no response.

I am going to post this to both of them to see if we can get a response. Hopefully P. of Palawan will come back. I am not holding my breath to wait for OceanGems.com.

[pearlsofpalawan]

Hi! Gigi here of pearls of palawan. It has just been over a month since my last post here. As I've said before I am a newbie in the pearl industry and a newbie in this forum. A google search led me to this site which I appreciate really for the vast information it carries on pearls.

I also said that I want to prove you wrong on your contention that there is no freshwater pearl production in the Philippines. And I still want to prove you wrong especially since I have encountered on the internet reports of local governments in the provinces in Bicol, Mindanao and Palawan providing support for their constituents in cultivating freshwater pearls. I also encountered the FAO (Fisheries Administrative Order) of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (a branch of the Philippines Department of Agriculture) on the Rules and Regulations Governing the Issuance of Lease for Pearl Culture. Section 1 of the FAO defined Pearl Culture as the process of producing pearls in the living mollusk, either in marine or freshwater, and which includes the taking or collecting young shells, raising, rearing or tending them in pearl farms. I also found a bulletin written in 1995 on the training the Philippine government provides on cultivation of freshwater pearls. Here is a link: http://spc.int/coastfish/Sections/re...IB8-10-Lad.pdf.
I will post more information on the production of freshwater pearls in the Philippines as I see them. My friends and I haven't had the chance yet to go to Palawan but as soon as we have the pictures, I'll post them in this thread. Cheers