Recent content by pebal

Hello, fellow pearl enthusiasts, I have just published a new edition of my LinkedIn newsletter, Natural Pearls, examining one of the most remarkable—and frequently misunderstood—episodes in American pearl history. Although Hernando de Soto is closely associated with the Mississippi, the pearls...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pearls-never-reached-mississippi-peter-von-perle-oatze

Antoinette Matlins was among the first pearl experts to take a serious interest in the Columbus Pearls collection, and her encouragement helped sustain the project over the years. As we approach America's 250th anniversary, I have prepared the attached press release exploring the historical...

In August 1498, Christopher Columbus sailed through a violent strait he named the Serpent's Mouth and entered a body of water so beautiful, so abundant, and so unlike anything he had ever encountered that he believed he had found the threshold of the earthly paradise. He called it Tierra de...

The Romans had a word for a pearl with no equal: uniō. The unique one. Not a category. A singular object. No two pearls are identical. The term existed because they needed it — because the natural pearl occupied a place in the ancient world that no other material could claim. Pliny the Elder...

Archaeological and historical evidence indicates that pearls were being perforated and worn as personal adornments long before the establishment of the Spanish pearl fisheries in the early sixteenth century. Christopher Columbus himself recorded observing Indigenous peoples wearing large drilled...

The Columbus Pearls project is an ongoing historical and scientific research archive centered on the early Caribbean pearl fisheries and an associated assemblage of natural saltwater pearls dating to the early Columbian era. The project combines archaeology, gemology, oceanography, radiocarbon...

A Spider… Worth More Than Gold Itself. This extraordinary tarantula brooch is crafted in yellow gold, set with over 70 carats of diamonds and sapphires, and crowned with something far rarer than any gemstone—a natural horse conch pearl weighing an astonishing 111.76 carats. Formed in the depths...

When people admire historical pearls in museums or royal collections, they rarely think about how those pearls were recovered. In the history of gemmology, pearls occupy a distinctive position. Unlike minerals that must be mined, pearls originate within living organisms and must be retrieved...

Hi Raj, do you have some pics?