New Freshadamas are 🤯🤯🤯

[Yens]

Just got pictures from a farm.
Bead nucleated FWP. They seemed to have achieve maximum luster in this newest harvest. Still small production for top quality rounds though.
"Freshadama" term should be credited to PP (Jeremy).

 

[KarinK]

Wow. More than ever you really need to trust your dealer about what you are buying. I wonder how these will price as FW. Looks like more people will be able to afford mirror luster. Nad more people will think they are buying Akoya and they are not.

 

[Pearlgully]

I remember when the Freshadama pearls were first available to the public, from Pearl Paradise, almost 20 years ago. They were finest quality tissue nucleated freshwater pearls. Are the Freshadama pearls still tissue nucleated or are they now bead nucleated? I also thought the name "Freshadama" was exclusive to Pearl Paradise. I purchased at least three 9 -10 mm Freshadama strands from PP back in 2006 and they are as beautiful today as they were back then!

 

[Pearl Dreams]

Freshadama is Pearl Paradise's name for their high end FWP. I expect it is trademarked.
I bought mine back in 2007!
Other companies have similar pearls but have their own names for them. (Or they should.)

 

[Yens]

Yup, specifically credit to Jeremy for the name...
These are Bead Nucleated FWP, aka Edison (which also is widely used and should have been trademarked).

 

[CortezPearls]

FWP are becoming more and more beautiful. They may give Akoya & SSPs a run for their luster now.
Gone will be the days of dull FWPs.

 

[jshepherd]

We've only used freshadama for tissue-nucleated pearls. The shape and luster of these new beaded pearls is really something. I saw a lot of them at the show, but we didn't buy any of them.

We went out to dinner with a close friend and had quite a long discussion about them. Our friend is the owner of a large FW pearl company and someone I've worked with for about 20 years. He has been moving heavily into beaded freshwaters so we haven't been doing as much business together over the past few years. Some of what he told me is very interesting and caused me to hesitate on these.

He told me the luster has been fading quickly. They haven't been around long enough for me to verify this, so I'm going to wait a bit to see if this is the case. He also told me that they are being farmed in Thailand as well as China. Thailand works well because the nacre deposition is so much faster - they don't have a cold season.

I'm planning to visit Zhuji after CIBJO in November, so I'm sure I'll know a lot more after the trip.

The other new thing in China are the giant Edisons. They are growing larger than 20 millimeters now. They are a new breed though. Nearly all of them have a heavily marred side, and the nuclei are half-drilled. They are inserting them with needles, similar to the way the original Kasumi ga Ura pearls are being grown.

The pearls feel lightweight. You can tell as soon as you pick them up, something is different about them. The size and the weight don't correlate.

Eric mentioned the nuclei being used were plastic, so I had a sliced pearl sent to GIA in New York for testing. They did a full analysis including X-ray imaging, Raman spectroscopy, specific gravity test, slight burn and acetone tests. All tests indicated the same thing. The bead is made of plastic. The Raman spectrum matched with polystyrene.

GIA asked to publish a lab note about their findings, so I sent them a collection of beaded pearls including the small Edisons we purchased last year, traditional Edisons, coin pearls, soufflé and irregular beaded. All the others tested as shell beads, thankfully.

 

[Celonmaril]

We went out to dinner with a close friend and had quite a long discussion about them. Our friend is the owner of a large FW pearl company and someone I've worked with for about 20 years. He has been moving heavily into beaded freshwaters so we haven't been doing as much business together over the past few years. Some of what he told me is very interesting and caused me to hesitate on these.

He told me the luster has been fading quickly. They haven't been around long enough for me to verify this, so I'm going to wait a bit to see if this is the case. He also told me that they are being farmed in Thailand as well as China. Thailand works well because the nacre deposition is so much faster - they don't have a cold season.

That's fascinating, thank you for sharing. How could luster fade so quickly? I was under the impression that luster was fairly stable provided the pearls are cared for properly.

 

[Pearl Dreams]

I was also wondering about that. Could the luster treatment for these bead nuked FWP be different than that for the tissue nucleated ones?