Recent content by JMichaels

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...

So, it’s bad when you clean the strand and are surprised to find out that it’s been pinked, right? Also, I swear they aren’t potatoes. That’s just weird shadows interacting with the luster. We need a follow-up to Pearls as One - maybe call it Pearls as Art - and it’s all about how to take a...

Thank you so much. I could see my mother having the pearl post removed if the pearl had fallen off or caught her hair - sadly, the necklace has been stored for at least 35 years, and she doesn’t remember I bought your stringing kit, and that’s my goal for tomorrow!

I just can across an interesting fact. The French Court paid 150,000 livres for a three strand pearl necklace. Presumably Marie Antoinette’s. A livre was valued at 1 lb of silver. So, MA’s necklace sold for 2.3 million, and the pendant 36 mil. 150,000 pounds of silver was worth 76 million...

Sadly, Google Lens just brought up all the Miki clasps. My mother did buy mostly designer items at the time, (she was in a hnw client facing job, so she focused on the obvious key pieces - bag, pen, jewelry, shoes and one good suit.) but this was a gift from an ex-boyfriend. He could easily...

My mother gave me a pearl necklace in a brown-suede Mikimoto case. 5.5-6mm akoya pearls, straight strand. Desperately needs restringing. The clasp does acid test as 18k, it’s fairly substantial, and the marks look right to my admittedly untrained eye. But… there is no pearl. Or diamond...

Another reason I would strongly advocate against buying pearls as an investment - the have a high moisture content (approximately 3-4% if I remember correctly) and can become brittle and lose luster if stored unworn, or exposed to very bright lights, or experience extreme and sudden temperature...

1. Akoyas were always my mother’s pearls, and my grandmother’s pearls. I have a few strands, and more stud earrings than I really care to count. 2. Luster, luster luster! I find it fascinating that the thing that gives them a beauty unlike most other pearls (those sub-tropical super-thin...

From my research, J Köhle was a jewelry findings manufacturer that specialized in clasps from 1919 to whenever they closed (at least 2018 - their JKa trademark is still licensed, but I can’t find a trace of the company after a business profile in 2018). Like Konig now, the company never really...