Recent content by JMichaels

The lower half are an example of photo distortion. (One day, I’ll get good pearl photos…. One day.). I think that my problem is that the stringing, materials, roundness and luster are consistent with cheaper akoyas, or better quality (not freshadama, but at least AA+) cfw.

I’m back! With another strand of … “well, it’s definitely a pearl.” I think I’ve gotten good at “cfw vs akoya” but this one is stumping me. The basics - 17” and 18”, 14k clasp, 6.5 mm. At least 12 years old (definitely not Edison) Pearls by the neck do have some surface flaws, including dull...

I Gold was around $270 in 2000-2001, when I first started playing with pearls. Minimum wage was $5.15 and the average house in the us was $175k. Today, gold is $4400, minimum wage is $7.25, and median house prices are $403k I was going through my pearling supplies, and found a couple of 14k...

The app is quite terrible. The design that it came up with wasn’t bad - it was crowded and dense, but it was not ugly. But it was absolutely nothing like what I wanted or like I had described. I think it would be best if you started with some real parameters - material/budget/type of jewelry...

Dried out akoyas will have slight cracks, and as you handle them, the nacre will flake off. 80s and 90s were the worst years for Akoyas, some of them spending as little as 6 months in the water after nucleation. Some of those would actually flake off in the drying lights of a display cabinet I...

Margarita Which is the ancient Roman name for pearl. Also, the producer of Tahitian pearls is Pinctada Margaritifera

To quote Cogsworth, “If it’s not (blue) baroque, why fix it?”

Baroque

So, fun fact. In the 1940s, the US tariffs on cultured pearls was 200% for finished strands - and 10% on unfinished strands. So jewelry stores on military bases would sell pearls, and then sell the clasps separately. But the clasps couldn’t be stored in the box when it went through customs. So...

I am a person with a taste for vintage jewelry, and I can reassure you with some authority, people are disgusting When carefully cleaning old pearls, I have have seen water turn brown, and I’ve seen akoyas go from dull and yellow to lustrous and pinked. It doesn’t work a miracle on every...

That’s good to know. I haven’t actually read her site, but I’ve read a whole lot of descriptions where people randomly combine pearl terms out of a lack of understanding or to make their items seem more precious.

Akoyas are cultured with a bead nucleus. You may find baroque Akoyas, where the nacre doesn’t build up evenly. You may find akoya keshi, when the bead is rejected but the oyster grows a pearl anyways, and those may be odd shaped. You may find blister pearls that grow on the shell and are cut...

Okay. Hear me out… You received the invitation to the workshop with that scammer who offers “educational” workshops to retirement communities… What if Sam The Clam contradicted him every time he said something blatantly false?

Some people really really care, and others don’t. In akoyas and Chinese freshwater pearls, color treatments are considered standard and a reputable dealer will differentiate if something is natural. In Tahitian and South Seas, natural colors are the standard, and a reputable dealer should...

The luster is lovely, the pearls are near-round, and the size is on the larger size. There are fish bites, but they are subtle. It wasn’t an amazing bargain, but that price is well in line with what similar strands sell for at jewelers. The real question is, do you love it? Does the rose...