Its been about one week since we left Hong Kong, with jet lag behind us and pearls safely on this side of the world I find myself with time to reflect on what we saw at the show.
Metallic freshwater pearls are not a brand new phenomenon but the availability and depth of color on display this year was. Never before have we seen metallic uniform strands like we saw this year. The deep purples, pinks and exotic greens available were really exciting. The amount of pearls needed to match just one strand like the ones below is staggering(100's of tons).
As well as the metallic strands I spent a good portion of
day 3 sorting through top grade drops, looking for exotic color metallic pairs. It was hard work but the pairs I was able to make will make some really great one of kind earrings.
Blue South sea pearls are not new but rarely are they this intense. These aren't silver pearls with a hint of blue, these are blue pearls with a hint of silver.
These pearls have been around for a while, most commonly referred to as "Ripples". Most strands I saw had nacre issues too large to ignore, not something I'd want to sell. I was able to spend some time cherry picking a few of the very best, including some monster 14-17mm strands! These strands will likely be our first offering from the trip, hopefully in early October.
These large strange looking pearls are the result of pearl farmers inserting a mud nucleus into a freshwater mussel. The result is a large but very light pearl, often with very striking characteristics.
These are not the biggest pearls but the colors I was able to find were nothing short of stunning. Like opals in the sun, these little guys stand out from across the room. Too small to use as a stand alone pearl, they will add very unique accents to larger pearl pieces.
On
Day 2 Alana and I sorted through several big tubs of fireballs cherry picking the very best. We found some great whites and exotic colors, not as many as we hoped for but still enough to make the effort worth while.
Edison pearls are bead nucleated pearls made famous by the company Grace Pearl. Most are too low in quality and too expensive to be of interest to us but we did hand select a few pairs of dark purples and one great pair of exotic green/copper pearls.
I want to thank everybody that followed along as we blogged from Hong Kong. All the comments we read on
Pearl Guide,
Pricescope &
The Facet Lounge were really great. If you haven't already we suggest you subscribe to our blog so you don't miss future updates.
