Guide to Cleaning and Caring for Pearls

[ladykemma]

I also would not recomend you wear your pearls everyday in such hot stick weather. too much of a good thing......But then again I feel every lady needs several strands of pearls.

Ash[/QUOTE]

i am intrigued by and can afford to try the hanadama quality freshwater pearls in May. (I won't call them freshadama). I am on a spending moratorium unitl we earn enough money to buy a new truck.

Avoiding the wearing o' the pearls in hot sweaty hot houston would mean not wearing them 9 months out of the year. Ain't gonna happen!

edited to add: purepearls is in houston - what do you do?

changing my sca name to Lady Anne Delamare

[Taylor]

I read somewhere that washing pearls on the silk thread will stretch the thread. I tried this on my newly restrung pearls which I felt were strung too tight. (The strand kinked, they were so tight.) I hung them to dry rather than laying them out. They did smooth out.
Also I used Zeide's suggestion of buffing a scratched pearl with a sunshine cloth. I rubbed for a good 20 minutes on an eBay find and it worked like magic plus the shine is incredibly better. I don't know how long the result lasts. Is this just a temporary fix? Can it be done often or is this just a last ditch fix? Dare I try this on old cultured pearls?

[marikita]

Also I used Zeide's suggestion of buffing a scratched pearl with a sunshine cloth.

Sunshine cloth? What are they and where do you get them from?

Also, with a lot of my designs, I use stainless steel cable, but it's nylon coated.... would it still damage the pearls? I haven't had any complaints yet, but I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing. I find it's much easier to deal with, and fairly easy to conceal the ends, etc.

Can anyone help?

Thank you!

Marikita

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Taylor,

Since you are actually polishing (i.e. removing surface) the pearls with a sunshine cloth, the effect will last until they scratch again. The trick works just as fine on cultured pearls. Although you are removing surface, that should not be that much of a concer since it is only in the micron range and pearls with nacre so thin that it may be a concern need to be tossed anyway.

Zeide

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Marikita,

The nylon coating is going to wear out within a year of average wear and then the steel will start slowly eating away at the drill holes. With designer wear that is really not that much of a problem because these pieces are typically not given as much wear as a classic strand.

Zeide

[National Pearl]

off topic question, but because I do wear them practically everyday, the string only lasts 6-9 months. is there something besides silk that will be strong and long wearing? for continual use pearls?

As several have already suggested, it perhaps is not that important what you string them on, though I would not use metal threads, as pearls are simply too soft a gem and you will end up doing damage to your pearls as zeide said. We have experimented with a few different natural fibers including a "mo-hair" (have no idea how it is spelled) and we actually prefer it best for its durability as well as how nicely the pealrs lay. However, we have not switched over as there is still a perception that silk-based products are best, so that is what we continue to use.

[purepearls]

In reply to LadyKemma's post:

"I am intrigued by and can afford to try the hanadama quality freshwater pearls in May. (I won't call them freshadama). I am on a spending moratorium unitl we earn enough money to buy a new truck.

Avoiding the wearing o' the pearls in hot sweaty hot houston would mean not wearing them 9 months out of the year. Ain't gonna happen!

edited to add: purepearls is in houston - what do you do?

changing my sca name to Lady Anne Delamare"

I wear my pearls year-round, regardless of the heat and humidity. The pearls do have to be restrung more often in this climate when worn all the time.

[Taylor]

Marikita,
I got my sunshine cloth from a Buy It Now on eBay. I believe you can also get them from many online beading supply sources. I had used one long ago on silver but had been warned not to use it on thin silverplate.
They claim they work wonders on golf clubs, so I plan to order some for hubby, too.
I'm going to try it on some old cultured pearls that have lost some of their shine. Will let you know. It did take some effort to remove the scuff marks on the pearl on my ring, but was well worth the effort. Thanks again Zeide.
Taylor

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Taylor,

Before you use the sunshine cloth on your old strand of pearls it helps to give them a light scrubbing in salt slush, rinse carefully in chlorine-free water. For rinsing, take a jug of Brita or P?r-filtered water and a large cup, put pearls in cup, fill up with water, swish around, pour water away, repeat 4 times. Then refill the cup one last time and let the pearls sit in the water for a day to rehydrate after the salt bath. When you use the sunshine cloth on them after that, they will come out sparkling like new. This method is of course only recommended for thick-nacre cultured pearls with no surface treatments. If you use it on latter-day akoyas or polymer-coated freshwater pearls, you just polish the nacre and/or enhancements off the bead. This cleaning method is preferably followed by restringing.

Zeide

[Taylor]

Yes Zeide,
After 2 minutes of rubbing on the strand, I realized this wasn't nearly as easy as doing a ring. Since they were showing some improvement, I'd already decided to try the salt slurry. They are in the rinse water now. Since we are on a well, there is no chlorine in our water but who knows what minerals. So I buy water to rinse them in. I'd already tried this on some eBay "learning pearls" and liked the results. I wasn't worried about damaging them; I had gotten them to cut in half, drop on glass to see how high they bouced (some test I read about), and in general play with. The cultured pearls I have rinsing now were my mother-in-law's so I'm guessing 1940-1950's, 6-7mm. She was a smoker. I don't think that does good things to pearls. The eBay ring I first tried the sunshine cloth on is old. The shank (the back side on the ring) is thin like it's been worn a long time. I think the pearl is South Seas but I'm too inexperienced to know for sure.
I guess if the point of this thread is to make a guide, we need to put a warning on these more extreme treaments.

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Taylor,

All pearls older than 20 years were probably exposed to tobacco smoke frequently as smoking was still a social normalcy at that time. So, even non-smokers that wore their pearls to social events had them exposed to a lot of smoke. The resulting tar deposits wash off easily with salt slurry. Older pearls were also not as extensively bleached as they are nowadays and had thicker nacre that made bleaching harder. Hence you see more actual akoya colors (cream to beige) in vintage strands. These pearls never were white at any time in their history. Tobacco smoke is not the culprit in their failure to fit our current expectations but rather our current expectations of how pearls are supposed to look like.

Anyhow, I am impressed with your progress in pearl restoration knowledge. You are turning into an outright professional.

Zeide

[Satine De La Courcel]

Avoiding the wearing o' the pearls in hot sweaty hot houston would mean not wearing them 9 months out of the year. Ain't gonna happen!

I was suggesting not wearing the same starnd of pearls everyday. not not wear them.

changing my sca name to Lady Anne Delamare[/QUOTE]

Interesting name change! why for???? You can always e-mail me pvtly if you want!

Lady Satine De La Courcel!

MKA on PG Ash

[Joan A]

I read somewhere that feeding you pearls to chickens will clean them! Of course you have to unstring them first.

Can't remember where I read this, but I thought it was interesting. Not that I have any chickens!

[National Pearl]

That is very humorous! It may be true, I have no idea, but either way it brought a smile to my face. The thought of retrieving the pearls after the "processing" has been completed was a more than a little thought provoking.

Anyone willing to test this theory?

If so, you might want to start with your freshwater potato pearls before moving on to your Tahitian or south sea

[jshepherd]

It is an old tale that basically presumes if the chicken passes the pearls, the oils will more or less polish the pearls and enhance the luster. I would not bet on getting the pearls back, however, and even if you were to find fecetian pearls floating around your barn, I do not think you would want to wear them.