Thank you! (but I must say the "vision" was pretty easy when this parcel arrived. Real praises go to the anonymous sorter out there who grouped all these anomalies together... they must have sorted thousands and thousands and thousands of Tahitian pearls before they got even this small lot.... thank you anonymous sorter.. more please!)
Jersey Pearl: the drilling was actually really difficult on these, much harder than I expected. I couldn't catch any of the bubbles in the drill cups, so I often held them in my hand to get just the right angle. With such big pearls, they are easier to hold, but the longer the drill bit is in the pearl the more can go wrong.
Purranha : I am not sure I could put an accurate % rate on how many pearls in a harvest end up to be " rosebud Tahitian pearls ".. of course most pearls end up being born baroque, and from there a small percentage (maybe 10-20%) end up with a bubble towards the "tip" of the pearl.. this is often a piece of keshi or an air pocket. Often times these top bubbles will "spin" off or fall off in the tumbling or drilling process.
I used to have my supplier save all the "top bubbles" that fell off in their sorting bags for me.... they generally come in a convenient button (cabochon) shape and I would bezel set them, as it is not always easy to find natural black and silver color pearls in very small sizes.
BUT.. this sort of rosebud texture where there are multiple bumps clustered together like that is probably around 2-5% of a harvest.
This is just my best guest! I imagine it varies from production to production and it is much more common to find this texture in fresh water pearls than in saltwater pearls.
Here are a couple more photos of some more baroque shape rosebud Tahitian pearls for the archives.
Happy Sunday all!
