kojimapearl
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2007
- Messages
- 432
May is bike month...
- Thread starter kojimapearl
- Start date
kojimapearl
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2007
- Messages
- 432
Glad you all liked the bicycle pearl as much as I did..
Sure Karin..
I rarely ever do this.. so bare with me!
It was a long time for me to be in Hong Kong this trip. I usually breeze in and out of there.. so it was really great to be able to see every supplier and spend hours combing through the back rooms. This time.. I found some really great ready made jewelry, leather bracelets with pearls.. I am really excited for the next lot of them to arrive. I was overjoyed to see some really original designs coming to life from an otherwise predictable marketplace.
On one of my first days there, Fuji and I went through one of the old safes and found some more vintage Lake Biwa pearls, which I had fun making up into necklaces. They had been in there so long the plastic wrap around them had turned yellow. I love the "relics" to be found in the back of the safes!.
Mostly I spend my days pouring out these huge bags of pearls and sifting through lots of strands for the really unusual ones. It is an exciting hunt.. and it never fails that the last bag you look in holds a treasure. (like the bicycle pearl). I found that in a lot very much like the buckets of pearls shown below. When I get into the real meditation that is sorting pearls.. I will spend hours with a lot making pairs. I am really happy that our niche is unusual pearls.. that way I can be creative.
One of my favorite purchases on this last trip was these pairs of natural silver blue Chinese fresh water baroques. They said they were "soufflee" pearls.. but I suspect that some of them had a shell bead nucleus.. but you never know until you drill them and wait for the "soufflee" to ooze out! he he... I know it's gross.. but I got them anyway.. because they look so much like big blue South Sea keshi pairs! I just hope I don't have to drill any of them!
Overall I found that the dyed pearls were of better quality than before. It used to be very difficult to find high quality dyed silver/grey pearls, and this last trip we found several lots of beautiful metallic luster dyed silver Chinese fresh water pearls in different shapes.
I found the pricing was relatively stable for Chinese pearls, although the largest bead nucleated/flame ball pearls we saw were astronomically high, and actually too large for most people to even want to wear ... more of a "mine are bigger" sort of appeal!
There was the ever present 85% junk pearls in many places (I guess by "junk" I mean, pearls that hold no interest to me at all, and/or are of very poor quality)
As pearl producers push to make bigger and bigger pearls.. some smaller standard shapes have become very very hard to find. I learned my lesson with that this year, while trying to source 10mm white coin pearls in fine quality. The lesson there is that the smaller fine quality pearls.. you purchased a few years ago.. might not be worth as much.. but try replacing them, and they all of a sudden triple in value!
From what I hear there is also a lack of trained employees to do the sorting and stringing in China (in comparison to some years back).. so I find that the strands tend to be less consistent.. as the brokers will include a greater extreme of quality in the same strand. This makes my job harder, but when the pearls are worth the time.. I delight in remixing strands to make them even more unusual.
There is still the unfortunate practice of bleaching pearls to the color of white side walk chalk.. with about as much luster surviving the process. That always make me squirm!
I am however finding more and more natural "pondslime" color in all shapes whereas before there were just a few shapes being left out of the bleach buckets. A relief.. although it is only driven by the fact that the brokers have figured out that people will actually PAY for natural color pearls. (it has nothing to do with a change in aesthetic!)
In general I was not impressed with the quality of the 2nd harvest pearls we were seeing and again mostly because the strands were not very well sorted and there were too many pearls with low luster and holes mixed in with gorgeous shining examples!
I love to look for the blue baroque Chinese Akoya pearls.. but there was nothing of any mention to be found.
A few of my old haunts there have branched into the Tahitian and South Sea markets, and so it was fun to see them carrying new products.
We found some massive feather pearls.. that resemble stalactites, or super detailed wings.. they are gorgeous and very expensive, especially considering the tiny slice of the market who must like them!
In general Hong Kong was the normal hustle and bustle of traffic and construction projects.. but we had a wonderful time having high tea with Fuji and his sister Aloha, both of whom grew up in the pearl business... so the conversation always revolves around the new pearls to be seen! It was great to see her after so long. Visited with my friends in Mui Wo who are building a beautiful cafe by the ferry harbor and took an afternoon to help paint. That was a great break for the eyes.. and provided lots of giggles.
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Sure Karin..
I rarely ever do this.. so bare with me!
It was a long time for me to be in Hong Kong this trip. I usually breeze in and out of there.. so it was really great to be able to see every supplier and spend hours combing through the back rooms. This time.. I found some really great ready made jewelry, leather bracelets with pearls.. I am really excited for the next lot of them to arrive. I was overjoyed to see some really original designs coming to life from an otherwise predictable marketplace.
On one of my first days there, Fuji and I went through one of the old safes and found some more vintage Lake Biwa pearls, which I had fun making up into necklaces. They had been in there so long the plastic wrap around them had turned yellow. I love the "relics" to be found in the back of the safes!.
Mostly I spend my days pouring out these huge bags of pearls and sifting through lots of strands for the really unusual ones. It is an exciting hunt.. and it never fails that the last bag you look in holds a treasure. (like the bicycle pearl). I found that in a lot very much like the buckets of pearls shown below. When I get into the real meditation that is sorting pearls.. I will spend hours with a lot making pairs. I am really happy that our niche is unusual pearls.. that way I can be creative.
One of my favorite purchases on this last trip was these pairs of natural silver blue Chinese fresh water baroques. They said they were "soufflee" pearls.. but I suspect that some of them had a shell bead nucleus.. but you never know until you drill them and wait for the "soufflee" to ooze out! he he... I know it's gross.. but I got them anyway.. because they look so much like big blue South Sea keshi pairs! I just hope I don't have to drill any of them!
Overall I found that the dyed pearls were of better quality than before. It used to be very difficult to find high quality dyed silver/grey pearls, and this last trip we found several lots of beautiful metallic luster dyed silver Chinese fresh water pearls in different shapes.
I found the pricing was relatively stable for Chinese pearls, although the largest bead nucleated/flame ball pearls we saw were astronomically high, and actually too large for most people to even want to wear ... more of a "mine are bigger" sort of appeal!
There was the ever present 85% junk pearls in many places (I guess by "junk" I mean, pearls that hold no interest to me at all, and/or are of very poor quality)
As pearl producers push to make bigger and bigger pearls.. some smaller standard shapes have become very very hard to find. I learned my lesson with that this year, while trying to source 10mm white coin pearls in fine quality. The lesson there is that the smaller fine quality pearls.. you purchased a few years ago.. might not be worth as much.. but try replacing them, and they all of a sudden triple in value!
From what I hear there is also a lack of trained employees to do the sorting and stringing in China (in comparison to some years back).. so I find that the strands tend to be less consistent.. as the brokers will include a greater extreme of quality in the same strand. This makes my job harder, but when the pearls are worth the time.. I delight in remixing strands to make them even more unusual.
There is still the unfortunate practice of bleaching pearls to the color of white side walk chalk.. with about as much luster surviving the process. That always make me squirm!
I am however finding more and more natural "pondslime" color in all shapes whereas before there were just a few shapes being left out of the bleach buckets. A relief.. although it is only driven by the fact that the brokers have figured out that people will actually PAY for natural color pearls. (it has nothing to do with a change in aesthetic!)
In general I was not impressed with the quality of the 2nd harvest pearls we were seeing and again mostly because the strands were not very well sorted and there were too many pearls with low luster and holes mixed in with gorgeous shining examples!
I love to look for the blue baroque Chinese Akoya pearls.. but there was nothing of any mention to be found.
A few of my old haunts there have branched into the Tahitian and South Sea markets, and so it was fun to see them carrying new products.
We found some massive feather pearls.. that resemble stalactites, or super detailed wings.. they are gorgeous and very expensive, especially considering the tiny slice of the market who must like them!
In general Hong Kong was the normal hustle and bustle of traffic and construction projects.. but we had a wonderful time having high tea with Fuji and his sister Aloha, both of whom grew up in the pearl business... so the conversation always revolves around the new pearls to be seen! It was great to see her after so long. Visited with my friends in Mui Wo who are building a beautiful cafe by the ferry harbor and took an afternoon to help paint. That was a great break for the eyes.. and provided lots of giggles.
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