Let's do some role-playing. You're a pearl dealer visiting Hong Kong. You've just been shown some eye-popping white baroque pearls that you would swear come from Australia. Hey, they've got the size, the shape, and the sheen.
The seller smiles. He knows what you're thinking. Then he tells you the price, which is a fraction of that quoted for bona fide SouthSea baroque strands. You have a sudden moment of cognitive dissonance as you puzzle over the cost of these pearls. But just before you hear the price explained, you guess their true origin. It's China. How is this possible, you wonder. Are you sitting down?
They're bead-nucleated. You heard right: These pearls were grown in freshwater mussels implanted with 7 to 9mm balls of shell, along with pieces of mantle tissue, and then put in the water for two years while a cultured pearl grew. Now you're really confused. Aren't bead-nucleated pearls supposed to be round? Why are these misshapen?
So far, no one knows for sure. Fuji Voll of Pacific Pearls, Mill Valley, California, who has been predicting breakthrough pearls like these for some time, thinks farmers may be trying to avoid the high cost of training workers to be accomplished nucleators. So, instead of placing beads in the body of the mussel, they tuck nuclei just under the shell in easy-to-reach mantle area. There, unfortunately, beads can't keep pearls from going haywire.
Of course, few are complaining just yet about the failure to produce rounds because baroques are among the most popular pearls these days. At first glance, these first-ever top Chinese bead-nucleated freshwater baroque strands, especially if white, look like they come from the South Seas. In fact, the best of these freshwater baroques are being strung with their SouthSea counterparts to make mixed-breed strands selling for $3,000 to $6,000. Available in 18 by 12 and 17 by 11mm sizes for under $200 per strand, the new Chinese baroques are easy to retail at three and four times their wholesale prices—and still remain bargains.
As you look closer and longer at these Chinese newcomers, you notice something distinctive about them that makes it easy to distinguish them from their SouthSea counterparts. It's the wing-like protrusions, which have earned these new-breed baroques the name of "fireball pearls" among some Chinese farmers and dealers.
The name makes perfect—albeit provisional—sense because "fireball" pearls usually have meteor-like shapes. Turn back to Tino Hammid's photograph and you'll see pearls with round bellies and trailing wings that could be likened to flames.
Eventually, farmers hope, the wing tips will disappear the way tadpole tails disappear. And then so will the name "fireball." For, voila, then you will have perfect spheres. No wonder dealers like Voll are watching these pearls with keen anticipation.
TO BEAD OR NOT TO BEAD
A decade ago, China astounded the world with peach and lilac colored semi-round freshwater pearls nucleated only with mantle tissue. Even today, fine 10 and 11mm strands of these glories command thousands of dollars. But they remain exceptions to the rule.
Over time, people skeptical about these near-round pearls began to speculate that they were secretly nucleated with reject pearls to shape them and create all-nacre uni-bodies. But gemologists disproved this theory by x-raying thousands of pearls and finding no evidence of pearl-nucleation.
Now just when the gemological world has grown used to thinking of fine Chinese freshwater pearls as all-nacre, and some dealers lobby for them to be classified as "non-nucleated," Chinese aquaculture has taken a weird turn to nucleation. What gives?
It's the economy, silly. Or so say regular travelers to China like Voll and Jeremy Shepherd, who runs a kind of Blue Nile for pearls called Pearl Paradise.com based in Santa Monica, California. Shepherd, who visits Chinese pearl farms 12 times a year, says that "bead-nucleation cuts pearl growing times in half, allows production of larger sizes, and will one day result in perfect rounds."
Isn't that a return to the akoya aesthetic? Yes, he answers, but with lots of dividends. For whom? For China and for people who dream of owning pearls that look like they came from the South Seas—at a fraction of the price. Well, maybe not a fraction, but at considerably below SouthSea norms. "The Chinese are becoming very good businessmen," Shepherd says.
"They are not going to give these pearls away once they have perfected them. But since production costs are far less than they are in Australia, they can sell their pearls at high prices which are still considerably less than those from the South Seas."
How soon, if ever, will we see such pearls? Voll thinks that we will see lovely 15-plus mm pearls by 2010. Shepherd predicts sizes as mammoth as 20mm by then.
True to SouthSea standards, nacre thickness of the new bead-nucleated freshwater pearls will be at least 2mm. Moreover, since these pearls come from mussels that are six to ten times larger than akoya oysters, nuclei can be much larger. In addition, since the freshwater mollusks quickly smother beads in thick nacre coatings, farmers can use less-expensive, lower-grade, highly striated bead nuclei whose blemishes are sure to be hidden. The end-result: luxe looks for much less money.
So get ready for bleached and natural-color bead-nucleated freshwater pearls with a roundness new to this variety. And when that happens, get ready for China to receive the full esteem it has long sought as a pearl producer.
