[Caitlin]

The thread on farming had this link in an interesting article: http://research.amnh.org/~mikkel/pearls/countries.html The link to Paspaley pearls is really worth checking out. Go there to get a full dose of the pearl mystique as well as a lot of useful information about the pearl business, start to finish. So many sub-industries come together to produce a pearl and the Paspaley family is engaged in them all and has put a lot of info about their industries on this site. As I read on another place on this site, The future of the South Sea Pearl Industry in Australia their way of life and business may be endangered by Indonesian and Filipino pearls.

One interesting thing about the Paspaley company is that it has a vertical structure for pearl production. They farm pearls. They match and grade pearls. They save the very best pearls for themselves and their artists to manufacture jewelry, which they retail in the very competitive highest end markets.

What they don’t keep to manufacture or display, they sell. Their farms apparently produce enough to sell a lot of best quality “matched” pearls to other top purveyors like Tiffany’s, Cartier, etc. Then, of course, the vast majority of the pearls, which are of lesser, but good, quality are traded to the world markets, but not under the Paspaley pearls brand name.

Anyway, it is a great online education to glimpse pearl loving family in touch with every aspect of pearl production, yet sure to be affected by the flood of other South Sea pearls.