From the beginning of organized societies pearls have been treasured when found. Virtually all natural pearls, that is those created in a mollusk without any human intervention, were (and are) the product of the mollusk’s immune system. When a small parasite entered the mollusk’s shell, the mollusk responded by laying a deposit of nacre (the stuff of its shell) over it. Over time, the mollusk added layer after layer of nacre over the encapsulated parasite; and a pearl was born. Natural pearls, though found in both fresh and salt water mollusks, are relatively rare; but in some places the conditions have been ‘perfect’ for pearl production; so, in relative terms, pearls abounded in them. I use the past tense because the rise of a truly world wide market for luxury goods (after A.D. 1500) had made continuous harvesting of natural pearls so profitable that harvesting nature’s pearl beds (for salt water pearls, principally the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Venezuela and the Sea of Cortez) to complete depletion usually occurred less than 200 years after they were discovered. The same is true of the great sources for fresh water pearls, the most important having been the Mississippi River’s watershed; so before 1900 salt water pearls had become extremely rare, as had gem quality fresh water peals.

The dearth of natural pearls encouraged many, among them Kokichi Mikimoto, to undertake practical research into “cultivating” clams to produce them; and in the early 1900s Mikimoto was successful. His technique, using the little Akoya oyster native to Japanese waters, was to capture the oyster larva, grow them for two to three years and then implant a sphere (most usually one cut out of mollusk shell) and an irritant into each of them. With luck, the oyster responded to the irritant by encapsulating it, and the implanted ball, in nacre. Dogged patience was required and even then about 40% of each crop of nucleated oysters either died or failed to produce a pearl of acceptable appearance. Nonetheless, Mr. Mikimoto persevered and prospered. His success led to a Japanese cultured pearl industry that was solidly in place as the 1930s began. The outbreak of war between the United States and Japan in 1941 brought Japan’s cultured pearl business to a halt; but at war’s end it was successfully resumed.

In the years following the war Japanese success in cultivating pearls caught the attention of other nations around the Pacific littoral; and one by one nations bordering the Indian Ocean and the adjacent Pacific islands began to experiment with the local Pinctada maxima oyster. By the early 1960s Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Burma were beginning to produce large cultured pearls in colors that ranged from a creamy white to a golden hue; but they produced no “black” pearls.

These are cultivated in the black-lipped oyster, Pinctada margaritifera, in the waters of French Polynesia. As pearls are always the same color as the nacre deposited inside the shell, almost none of the pearls of French Polynesia are actually black. Instead they range in color from silver to charcoal, or to any one of a myriad of colors that, while fundamentally a shade of gray, display colors ranging from a “plummy” purple to an iridescent green. As the mussel is large, so too are the pearls produced by it. While Akoya pearls rarely exceed 8 millimeters in diameter, those produced by Pinctada margaritifera are seldom smaller than 9 millimeters in diameter and have ranged to very close to 21 millimeters (20.92 mm) in diameter. Truly, the pearls of French Polynesia are breathtaking in both size and beauty.

In recent years China has entered the pearl business in a big way, raising Akoya oysters for pearls in its more northerly coastal waters and fresh water mollusks in its major river systems. Owing to the great volume of Chinese fresh water cultured pearls, larger cultured pearls have become more approachable in price than in the past.

The soft luster of pearls makes them very different from the Hearts On Fire diamond. Each meticulously cut Hearts On Fire brightly blazes with fire that is almost blinding. Its rare beauty, greater than that of any pearl, makes it the perfect gift to express your deepest emotions. For an anniversary, an engagement or to mark one of life’s other significant events, nothing will say “I love you” as perfectly as the Hearts On Fire. What else would you expect of the world’s most perfectly cut diamond? Check out our Hearts On Fire collection on line at hurstsberwynjewelers.com; then phone us at 708.788.0880 for an appointment to select the perfect gift to speak for you. We’re Hursts’ Berwyn Jewelers; and we’ll help you realize your dreams.

From the beginning of organized societies pearls have been treasured when found. Virtually all natural pearls, that is those created in a mollusk without any human intervention, were (and are) the product of the mollusk’s immune system.  When a small parasite entered the mollusk’s shell, the mollusk responded by laying a deposit of nacre  (the stuff of its shell) over it.   Over time, the mollusk added layer after layer of nacre over the encapsulated parasite; and a pearl was born.  Natural pearls, though found in both fresh and salt water mollusks, are relatively rare; but in some places the conditions have been ‘perfect’ for pearl production; so, in relative terms, pearls abounded in them.   I use the past tense because the rise of a truly world wide market for luxury goods (after A.D. 1500) had made continuous harvesting of natural pearls so profitable that harvesting nature’s pearl beds (for salt water pearls, principally the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Venezuela and the Sea of Cortez) to complete depletion usually occurred less than 200 years after they were discovered.  The same is true of the great sources for fresh water pearls, the most important having been the Mississippi River’s watershed; so before 1900 salt water pearls had become extremely rare, as had gem quality fresh water peals.

The  dearth of natural pearls encouraged many, among them Kokichi Mikimoto, to undertake practical research into “cultivating” clams to produce them; and in the early 1900s Mikimoto was successful.  His technique, using the little Akoya oyster native to Japanese waters, was to capture the oyster larva, grow them for two to three years and then implant a sphere (most usually one cut out of mollusk shell) and an irritant into each of them.  With luck, the oyster responded to the irritant by encapsulating it, and the implanted ball, in nacre.  Dogged patience was required and even then about 40% of each crop of nucleated oysters either died or failed to produce a pearl of acceptable appearance.  Nonetheless, Mr. Mikimoto persevered and prospered.  His success led to a Japanese cultured pearl industry that was solidly in place as the 1930s began.   The outbreak of war between the United States and Japan in 1941 brought Japan’s cultured pearl business to a halt; but at war’s end it was successfully resumed.

In the years following the war Japanese success in cultivating pearls caught the attention of other nations around the Pacific littoral; and one by one nations bordering the Indian Ocean and the adjacent Pacific islands began to experiment with the local Pinctada maxima oyster. By the early 1960s Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Burma were beginning to produce large cultured pearls in colors that ranged from a creamy white to a golden hue; but they produced no “black” pearls.

These are cultivated in the black-lipped oyster, Pinctada margaritifera, in the waters of French Polynesia.   As pearls are always the same color as the nacre deposited inside the shell, almost none of  the pearls of French Polynesia are actually black.  Instead they range in color from silver to charcoal, or to any one of a myriad of colors that, while fundamentally a shade of gray, display colors ranging from a “plummy” purple to an iridescent green.  As the mussel is large, so too are the pearls produced by it.  While Akoya pearls rarely exceed 8 millimeters in diameter, those produced by Pinctada margaritifera are seldom smaller than 9 millimeters in diameter and have ranged to very close to 21 millimeters (20.92 mm) in diameter.  Truly, the pearls of French Polynesia are breathtaking in both size and beauty.

In recent years China has entered the pearl business in a big way, raising Akoya oysters for pearls in its more northerly coastal waters and fresh water mollusks in its major river systems.  Owing to the great volume of Chinese fresh water cultured pearls, larger cultured pearls have become more approachable in price than in the past.

The soft luster of pearls makes them very different from the Hearts On Fire diamond.  Each meticulously cut Hearts On Fire brightly blazes with fire that is almost blinding.  Its rare beauty, greater than that of any pearl, makes it the perfect gift to express your deepest emotions.  For an anniversary, an engagement or to mark one of life’s other significant events, nothing will say “I love you” as perfectly as the Hearts On Fire.  What else would you expect of the world’s most perfectly cut diamond?   Check out our Hearts On Fire collection on line at hurstsberwynjewelers.com; then phone us at 708.788.0880 for an appointment to select the perfect gift to speak for you.  We’re Hursts’ Berwyn Jewelers; and we’ll help you realize your dreams.

As you may recall, in the wake of last November’s estate jewelry show and sale I was compelled to remark that there were aspects of the collector market that I simply did not understand. Though I did not expand upon my remark at the time, an article on cameos that appeared in a recent “Financial Times” supplement both reawakened and resolved at least some of my puzzlement. The lead line in the article read, “The cameo jewel – until recently deemed staid and matronly – is reborn as a modern style statement . . . .” “Now how had it become a modern style statement,” I wondered, and then went on to read the article and do a little research. (more…)

Five or six weeks ago a few of our regular clients and our staff spent a few hours, socially, with Maarten DeWitte, one of Hearts On Fire’s master diamond cutters.  In the course of the evening the conversation, somehow, turned to the Hope diamond and this led Maarten to comment on the diamond’s beauty.  It seems that he had visited the Smithsonian to see it and had been disappointed by its cut (in his words, “a real hack job”), so much so that he told the curator that he would be happy to recut it to “release” the potential beauty that lies within it.  Amazingly enough, the curator was horrified at the idea, even though the diamond has been re-cut at least twice.  Of course, he is not the authority on diamonds  that Maarten is; so his reaction was almost completely predictable.  When a “civilian” thinks about diamonds, it is most often the weight of the gem that concerns him rather than its beauty.  He more or less presumes that all diamonds are cut to the same standard; this engenders the cutter’s dilemma. (more…)

Bernie’s  in the soup, again.  If you’ve been following the news about alleged swindler Bernard Madoff, you know he’s in trouble with the court; but if you’ve not been following it, read on.  He’s been under house arrest for a few weeks, confined to his $7 million apartment while awaiting trial for an alleged $50 billion Ponzi swindle.  Now prosecutors want to throw the 70 year old into the slammer and keep him there until he goes to trial. They contend that, “The defendant showed that he could not be trusted to obey the court’s orders and that no set of conditions could constrain his ability to harm the community.”  What had this Park Avenue desperado done?  Specifically, after the court had frozen all of his assets, he shipped 5 small boxes of jewelry (one of them, alone, valued at more than $1 million) to friends and relatives, some of whom blew the whistle on him to U.S. prosecutors (Were they just being good citizens or had Bernie ticked them off?).  While the Feds see it as an attempt to hide assets, Bernie’s lawyer says it was “just a mistake”, that his client was innocent of any deliberate violation of the court’s order.  (more…)

“Simple Gifts”, a Shaker dance tune, was written in 1848 by Shaker Elder Joseph. It’s a one verse song with lyrics extolling the virtues of the simple life and reading (in part) ” ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free, ‘Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.” Espousing a self sufficient, communal and celibate life, they might seem strangers to this column, but somehow I feel that the title of the tune connects to the Wittlesbach diamond which was sold, at auction, for approximately $23,500,000 on December 11, 2008. An approximately 36 carat blue-gray gem (almost certainly of Indian origin), a bit of mystery surrounds it, as all the records which may have revealed its origin were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). (more…)

The question of “value” is probably the most difficult for the male jewelry buyer. Typically, he only shops for jewelry every two and a half years and then he often has the uncomfortable feeling that he is not spending his money wisely. Take the young man who entered our shop a couple of weeks ago, for instance. He’d done some online shopping and he’d shopped a few other stores before he entered ours. Kathleen greeted him and spent more than an hour with him discussing the parameters of diamond beauty; and when she was done, he asked that we get diamonds within a very tight range of weight, color, clarity and cut characteristics to show him. We agreed, even though the diamonds he’d asked to see were barely within the range of what we’d consider “O.K.”. A week later he arrived for the appointment, examined the diamonds and remarked that he didn’t like any of them very much. As we represent Hearts On Fire, the most beautiful diamond on the market, we could not disagree with him; so he and Kathy worked out a new set of characteristics that he thought would be acceptable, scheduling an appointment for a week later. The day came, he arrived and he liked these diamonds much better; but they were on the outer fringes of what he was willing to spend. Daunted by the prices, he could not make a decision, complaining that he didn’t know if he was getting a good deal our not; and there it was left. What he may do in the future is anyone’s guess; but it raises the question of the interrelationship between price and value. (more…)

By value, Canadian diamond production currently accounts for close to 20% of the whole wold’s diamond production, making it, along with Russia and Botswana, one of the “big three” diamond producers; but it’s not been easy. As I write this, there is light, drifting snow falling on the Ekati diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories and the temperature is about 0º Fahrenheit. I’m told the hip young crowd speaks of diamonds as “ice”; but as I am neither hip nor young, I’ll have to take that on faith. The locution, however, is particularly appropriate when speaking of Canadian diamonds. If you’ve seen “Ice Road Truckers” on the History Channel you already know that all of the mines, four of them within 200 miles of the Arctic Circle and the fifth in northern Ontario (chillingly close to Hudson’s Bay) strain common notions of what constitutes “accessibility”. The roads, literally across frozen tundra, frozen marshes and frozen lakes, are in service for no more than six months of the year; this is when heavy equipment is brought in along with other, less weighty, cargo. (more…)

Pliny the elder (or to give him his proper Roman name, Gaius Plinius Secundus) was born  into a wealthy family in about A.D. 23; and died in the disaster at Pompeii in A.D. 79.  Military and other government service occupied much of his life; and his travels to the corners of the empire in pursuit of his duties seem to have ignited his curiosity, arousing in him a passion to write.  While serving as commander of the Roman Navy of the Western Mediterranean his virtues led to his death at Pompeii.  He observed the cloud of ash over Pompeii and ordered a fast boat to take him there to investigate.  Once there, he saw the scope of the disaster and mounted an humanitarian mission.  Personally commanding the evacuation on the beach, he became a victim of the disaster.  Stoic that he was, he would not have mourned his own death. His magnum opus was his “Historia naturalis”; and though it might best be thought of as an encyclopedia, it is as much about the nature of man in his society as it is about natural history.  Critical of his sources, and amused by humanity, in his observations on human mortality he had to observe that a man who was reputed to have reached the age of 150 years had, at least, been a tax payer for that period of time. If ever there was a credible man, it was he; and this brings us to Book 37 of the “Historia naturalis”. In it Pliny, discussed precious stones, revealing both his sophistication as an observer and man. (more…)

We have an estate jewelry show and sale coming up on the 14th and 15th of this month and it’s a first for us. It all started when Kathy and I were at the Las Vegas Luxury Show last May. It’s a “by invitation, only” show we regularly attend; but to be frank, we’d found nothing that really excited us until we walked by a largish booth with “estate jewelry” on display. Naturally, it was the bizarre that caught my eye, in this case, a dog collar. It was in light green leather with a diamond accented solid gold name plate; how unusual! I had to know more about it, so Kathy and I stepped in and asked for more information. In answer to our first question, we were told that the collar really was for a dog; but as we looked around, more questions came to us. Somehow, we’d equated “estate jewelry” with jewelry that people had inherited and didn’t want to keep; such is not invariably the case. (more…)