China Trip with Stephen Bloom

jshepherd

Pearl Paradise
Joined
Jun 22, 2004
Messages
6,273
I am just returning from a week-long trip to Hong Kong and China, and decided to just detail the trip in a type of blog fashion. I thought some of you may appreciate it. Before I go into the trip, however, I want to let everyone know that we are posting the documentary on YouTube. I am almost completely out and do not plan to run another batch for a time. We have only uploaded one section so far, as there are file size limits. Hopefully the rest will be up within the next week. Sorry about the resolution, YouTube is a bit limiting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmC_kxvS334

The purpose of the trip was two-fold. On the business side I was carrying a recent harvest of drop and circle Tahitian pearls to a factory which I contract in China to have them drilled and matched. I also needed to visit a findings factory in Hong Kong to discuss new designs. The second part of the trip was to meet up with Stephen Bloom in Haikou and lead him to the Akoya producing areas of Xuwen and Xilian.

* For those of you who do not know, Stephen Bloom is the best selling author of Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America. He has been commissioned by his publisher to write a book about pearls called “Tears of Mermaids”. It will be a novel about the stories and the people behind the pearl industry.

As I would have extra time in Hong Kong, I decided to set up a visit with Fukui shell factory (they produce nuclei from Mississippi shell) and take a look at their personal harvest of Akoya. They have a small farm in Western China, quite a distance from the traditional pearling areas.
I also decided to take Carol Chui, the head of the Hong Kong Paspaley office, up on her outstanding offer of dinner in Tsim Sha Tsui.

The visit to Fukui went very well. I met Arthur and Jenny Wong, the president and his daughter. They were both very nice and very proud of their product - rightly so. What impressed me about their pearls was the immediately apparent thick nacre. Instead of a few hanks having thick nacre, they all appeared to be better than average. Their explanation made sense, and I do believe them. They claim to only process their own farmed pearls, and they culture for a year and a half, which is in the upper end of culturing times. So there was no mixing of nacre depth. Mr. Wong stated that the average nacre depth was more than .5. This is impressive, as the average Japanese is .35 today
Their processing was very good as well. They explained that they had hired a Japanese processor who is in charge of the operation. The experience was evident in the matching of size and color.
Now there was one thing that I found surprising. Every hank was tagged with a label stating “Product of Japan”. When I questioned Mr. Wong on this point, he stated that their Japanese processor had deemed the pearls good enough to be product of Japan. This lead me to telephone my friends in Japan from the hotel later that day. I was under the impression that the pearls needed to enter Japan before they could be called Japanese pearls. He informed me that some Japanese interpret the 1953 “Export Aquatic Maritime Products Act” initiated by Mikimoto, to deem that any pearls touching Japanese hands may be called “Product of Japan”.
Now I personally feel that this is taking the policy a little too far. In the end I purchased all of the best hanks they produced, and I had them shipped directly to my office in Los Angeles. So now I have these strands imported into the US as “Product of Japan”, because that is how they are labeled. But they will never even touch Japanese soil unless one of our customers travels to the land of the rising sun wearing one of our strands.
Well, this point aside, I did like the pearls, and I certainly appreciated their operation. It is currently much too small to be a large supplier of ours. Their top grade (that I purchased) only consisted of around 100 strands. But I do intend to support their operation after each harvest, because I want to support what they are trying to do - only produce the best, and not simply make a quick ROI.

Later that evening I met up with Carol Chui from Paspaley Hong Kong. She recently replaced Jane Tamala, and although we had corresponded in the past, and I had purchased pearls from their HK office, I had never met Carol personally.
Carol immediately surprised me as being an incredibly likable person. Funny, sweet, young… not the stuffy-type that so many in the industry are known for. Paspaley certainly made a great choice putting her on the top. I am sure she has a bright future ahead of her.
We stayed out quite late that evening discussing auctions, sales trips, farming, and pearls, pearls, pearls! I believe her personality alone has won me over to Paspaley. I promised to visit the office for our next SSP purchase.

The next morning I left early for Haikou. I wanted to be sure to arrive early enough as Stephen Bloom was due to arrive at 3:00pm from Shanghai. Because he does not speak Chinese, and it is nearly impossible to find an English speaker in Haikou, I wanted to be arrive early enough, with a backup, so he would have no chance of being stranded.

He arrived on schedule and we made our way to the port to take a boat to Haian. Stephen interviewed me on the boat ride over. By 7:30 we had arrived into Haian where my business partner had reserved rooms for us in the new Sunnybay Hotspring Resort. It had just opened up, and it is beautiful. It was the first time visiting the area that I did not feel like I was on a camping trip!

The next day we met up with my business partner and a friend of mine from Zhuji who had traveled in that evening to show me some things she had been working on for the past 6 months - for me, because so many of you want to see them (I will get to that in a bit). We went to the factory in Xuwen where Stephen interviewed my farming partner and a few of the processors in the factory. The processors are mostly young ladies in their early 20’s. It was interesting to learn a bit about their personal lives. A couple of them really opened up.

From there we headed to Xilian to see the harvest (we are harvesting part of our first crop of Akoya), and to visit the nucleation sheds, as a few farms have started implanting early. Stephen interviewed about a dozen or so people, from the old local farmers, to the nucleation technicians, to seasonal families taking part in the harvest. I shot some of this on video, and as soon as I can figure out this editing software I will try to post some of it on YouTube. Stephen had very interesting questions. They were the kind of thing we in the industry would not consider asking. He wanted to know what made these people tick, and what their backgrounds are, and their future dreams are.

Back at the factory I sat down for a few hours with my friend from Zhuji. I mentioned last year that I had someone in the area collecting fancy baroques for me. Her factory has processed about 400 kilo of baroques since my request, and she has collected nearly 40 kilo meeting my quality requirements. She showed me some strands that they were already preparing as samples. They are not yet treated (no polish, luster, or bleach) as she wanted my opinion on whether we should leave them as is, or process them. Because so many people have been asked for untreated, I decided to set guidelines for pieces that would go through the standard process, and those that would not. Basically, if the pearls have natural orient and a high shine, the treatment is not necessary. Also, I am having her cherry pick pearls to create a few super strands if possible, and a few exotic colored strands as well. I ended up taking 12 of the untreated strands with me. I will post a picture later to see what everyone thinks. I think they are going to be a hit, personally. It sure has been a long process in putting them together!

That night we took Stephen out to experience Chinese style KTV with the pearl farmers. It is almost a nightly ritual for many of them. Stephen enjoyed learning the local dice game and watching the farmers sing Karaoke.

The next day I headed back to Hong Kong to connect back to the States. I am now on my way, and will be arriving home soon…
 
Last edited:
Hi Jeremy

Thank you so much for this China blog-esp the news about leaving some pearls untreated.

I have an untreated strand from you- (For those who haven't see it, it is lavender transitioning to white and a pic is on this site somewhere...)


This strand is one of my favorites and I have worn it for 7-8 months. If this is an example of ones left untreated, it is proof positive that it is not necessary to treat all CFWP.

Untreated pearls should go over big with a significant and growing demographic!
 
Enjoy the freshwaters!
 

Attachments

  • FreshwaterBaroques.jpg
    FreshwaterBaroques.jpg
    72.4 KB · Views: 93
My goodness, Jeremy, these are untreated?! They're beautiful!

Perle
 
No processing whatsoever on those 12. They were just composed as samples to test different combinations.
 
Those are beautiful. I love the colors and of course the unique shapes too.
But now I'm curious. Are the freshwaters you sell in natural colors treated ( peach, purple and pink), and what types of treatments are the norm if so?
 
All freshwater (jewelry grade) are polished and go through a luster treatment before being sold. This is universal for strands purchased by the hank simply because the higher shine commands higher prices. This is the case for all fancy natural colors. The white pearls go through the same process as well as bleaching. Some lighter colored pearls (light peach), are also bleached and sold as white.

The only way to get them untreated is to separate the materials post harvest. The pearls are still washed (that is one process you do not want to skip), but the luster and shine are natural.
 
How nice! It is great to hear the story along with the pearls...
The dark violet ones really stand out (and beg for preferential treatment and a strand of their own, I think) :)


jshepherd said:
The only way to get them untreated is to separate the materials post harvest.

But how can the lack of surface and color treatment be identified after the fact? Is magnification useful / enough? In principle, of course.
 
The pearls are in the 10-11mm size range.

But how can the lack of surface and color treatment be identified after the fact? Is magnification useful / enough? In principle, of course.

You would hvae to compare a full lot to determine whether they had not been treated. You would see a lot of creamy colors which border white and peach.
But for the most part, you will never see freshwater that have not gone through processing unless they are purchased as materials, not hanks. The polish/luster/bleach is always done before the pearls are matched and sold.
 
Are these freshwater baroques bead nucleated or solid nacre?

I am asking because the majority do not look like "fireballs".
 
They are all tissue nucleated, with most coming from 5-8 year ponds. No, they do not have that "fire ball" look to them. The shape is much more natural.
 
They are just yummy looking Jeremy! Are you going to be putting together all multi-color strands or will you have some single-color ones (i.e. white, lavender, etc.) as well?
 
I am planning on putting together a few fancies, as truly unique pieces. But for the most part they will likely be white and multi.
 
Oh wowsa!

I can't wait to see some of the finished product, Jeremy- I am particularly excited to see the single-color fancy necklaces in the very baroque shapes :D
 
Maybe I am the last to notice the second installment of the pearl video: LINK

The first few frames smell like a dentist's cabinet! :eek:
 
You aren't the last one to know about the new video, thanks for posting the link. I really enjoyed both of the videos and think it is great that Jeremy provides educational info about pearl production etc. Knowledge is a great thing and allows clients to make more informed decisions about there purchases, and thats also part of what is so great about this pearl forum.

I sound a little like a cheerleader so I think I've said enough.
DFrey
 
Well, it is off to China once again. This time my traveling companions will be two people from the GIA. This should be one for the books.
 
Back
Top