This thread is da bomb if you haven't read strack: ZGE's best moment

[Zeide Erskine]

Bombshells

Bombshells

Hi Caitlin,

When you get the Strack book all the bombshells come at once. Since it has 700 pages in German you are expecting a veritable Blitzkrieg from me. O.k., how about the fact that Kokichi Mikimoto did not actually invent pearl culturing? Neither did his son in law Tokichi Nishikawa or the Mise guy whose first name I cannot recall right now. Most of the ground breaking work in that respect was done decades earlier by William Saville-Kent who was culturing bead nucleated pearls in pinctada maxima in Australia when Kokichi Mikimoto was still doing the noodle thing. And Louis Boutan was culturing whole and mab? pearls in haliotis in France at that time.

Zeide

 

[Caitlin]

Love it!
I read recently and posted about the Carl Linnaeaus' attempts at culturing pearls and of course the Chinese buddhas are cultured. way older than 20th century, all. I guess Linneaus would whirl in his grave at people called pintadas oysters?
I always knew that Bill Gates and MIKMO used similar tactics to establish their respective territories with the patents and/or copyrights then dominated.
Doncha just love it that the Japanese started the Chinese back on track? I expect there will be some more legend shifting in the next few years.

 

[Zeide Erskine]

Getting rid of Mystique

Getting rid of Mystique

Hi Caitlin,

I think pearls will find much broader and greater appreciation if the Mystique (only genuine with the capital M) is discarded. My hunch is that this could happen relatively soon and that akoyas in their present sorry form are not going to survive. In car terms, they represent AMC cars with a heavy advertising budget. As soon as there is a broader knowledge base around, they will either have to go back to the drawing board or be relegated to bead stores, bling or no bling.

Zeide

 

[Caitlin]

When I first came to this forum I reviewed several brand name sites and was choked, absolutely gagged, by their Mystique. I referred to it specifically in my posts, even compared it to ads for the New Yorker magazine, which I believe sets and maintains the standard for Mystique advertisers in America.

In fact, Mystique advertising is very expensive and adds an appreciable amount to the price of the pearls. So does a fancy storefront.

This forum was put forth by an online seller. By buying from the source and selling online, many of the forum members here with pearl businesses are cutting out a big chunk of money between the source and the buyer. By reading this forum, I think the intelligent buyer will quickly see that Amanda, Terry, Stephen, Bill, both Jeremy’s, and others, are serious students of pearls and far more knowledgeable than jewelry store folks.

The online folks here are already on the cutting edge of pearl marketing. JShepherd and many others are making China familiar haunts and establishing powerful relationships with growers and the factories. I believe at least JS is bringing back lots that are unprocessed and natural and of excellent quality in the CFWP. Anyone else doing that….yet?

Who is in a better position to expand the market for quality CFWP? Whose demands from customers will influence the growers? Who could start asking if anyone would try a few tissue nucleated akoyas, especially if they are underwriting the harvest, as some here have already done. The answer is these intrepid pioneers could. And by so doing actually help leverage cultured akoyas onto a better track, help bring fine CFWP to the equality they deserve.

I predict you will see some of your wishes come true, especially through people who read and post here. What do you predict will be the result of de-Mystique-ification? I see you predicted a mass desertion of thin-skinned akoyas. Which beads will then have to be peeled and restrung as just plain, honest, mother of pearl, .......but what else SHOULD happen in your opinion?

Does the Strack book discuss the actual artificial processes pearls are subjected to in more detail than you have, so far? I am interested in more info on the cheap, medium and expensive processes by famous chemical companies, where could I get it?
What credential do I need to write them and ask them and get an answer?

 

[Zeide Erskine]

Pearl processing

Pearl processing

Hi Caitlin,

The actual combination of treatments and chemicals (or physicochemical processes) used are closely guarded secrets of the so-called pearl factories. The big chemical companies are known sources for the "consumables" but for obvious reasons do not publicly advertise these as ready-made packages. They send sales representatives for that. You will find a whole chapter in the Strack book devoted to pearl treatments, though.

As far as my prediction for the akoya industry goes, I think that deMystique-fication will lead to consumer boykott and make nacre thickness verification and treatment declaration mandatory. That in turn is going to drive the growers either out of business if they do not want to change or back to the roots with marine tissue nucleation or long-cultured bead nucleation. I call that "deflimsification." As you know, I prefer the tissue nucleation idea, but the old cultured pearl standards will be too hard to meet that way. Actually, because the cultured pearl industry was originally targeting a market that had never seen real pearls before, i.e. the mass market, they were striving to imitate fake pearls in real. In a perverse way, the short-cultured atrocities are actually the logical conclusion of a process that started a little over a hundred years ago.

Zeide

 

[Caitlin]

Readers:
You heard it here, first.

Now lets hope the animal rights folks don't hear about that increased death rate in bead nucleated oysters. After all, bead nucleating is stressful to the critter, even if it isn't really an oyster. tee hee.
It reminds me of the cages all commercial chickens were forced to produce in. The uproar, as people learned about hens in cages with their bills cut off, has led to free range chicken eggs being available in the Safeway. Along with a variety of organic foods. This movement is no longer limited to the Birkenstock crowd, as it used to be called- Birkenstack has gone mainstream and so has natural and organic food.

So will natural, untraumatised unprocessed pearls like those ones JS has on the "Opinions?" thread. I would SO much like to have a few of those in all the colors and whites he had in the pictures. I am aiming to get some because I want to string some up in my own designs!

 

[jshepherd]

Posting from the other side of the pond - I had to chime in on this one.

Death rate for bead nucleation should not be a large consideration when mantle-nucleated death rate is 100%, at harvest, not so with all bead-nucleated oysters.

Regarding the animal rights arena - most of you do not know this, but I am a very large supporter of animal rescue groups in Los Angeles. I am heavily involved in spay/neuter programs and recusing animals from high-kill shelters. But I definitely see oysters and mussels differently. They are mollusks, without a brain and without pain - more like a renewable resource than an animal. And pearl farms actually protect the species, not destroy them.

 

[Zeide Erskine]

Mussel mortality

Mussel mortality

Hi Caitlin,

If you think about it, it is really not that hard to understand why the mussels die at the startling rates they do in bead nucleation. To place the bead, operators have to cut open the gonad, stretch the tissue to fit in the bead, and then put the mussel on post-operative watch to see if it bleeds to death from it. That's somewhat like cutting open a non-pregnant woman, sticking a grown baby into her womb (without stitching it shut afterward) and then watch whether she dies or not. Actually it is not the horrendous mortality rate that's surprising, it's the survival rate. Those are darn tough cookies! Freshwater mussels are far more delicate and do not take to primary bead nucleation that easily. That's why freshwater bead-nucleated pearls typically involve inserting the nucleus into existing pearl sacs from which the farmers have already harvested a non-nucleated pearl and then gluing it shut with surgical tissue glue.

Zeide

 

[Zeide Erskine]

Nucleation

Nucleation

Hi Jeremy,

Not all freshwater mussels are killed at harvest in contrast to akoyas that are. Because of the anatomy of hyriopsis cumingii, they typically only accept bead nuclei, round or shaped, when these are inserted into an existing pearl sac and that has to be closed or the same hemorrhaging problem occurs as in gonadal bead nucleation. True, Tahitians and South Seas are usually renucleated, but in the typical propaganda-speak of the Mystique (only genuine with the capital M) that would put them on a par with multiple nucleated freshwater pearls that said Mystique (only genuine with the capital M) tends to disparage so much.

Zeide

 

[Caitlin]

Hi Jeremy
You mean the Little Mermaid isn't real? Darn! This has been a day of shocks! What next? I was positive I oculd hear all those little mollusks singing in their shells, happy as clams in their beds.

I suppose that means Billie Button isn't real either.......

Here is the story of Billie Button's life: http://www.fws.gov/midwest/mussel/teacher/billie_button_download.html and
Freshwater Mussels of the Upper Mississippi River System

 

[Caitlin]

JS
On a serious note
I applaud your work with animals.

And I applaud the work all the pearl fishers do to keep the water clean and the populations healthy.

Now if they can just genetically engineer some tough "oysters" to grow pearls the way cows have been bred to give milk, we'll really be onto something! (joke!) Maybe put a franken fish gene in there so they will be impervious to shock and also multiply so fast there will be pearl shellfish everywhere, invading the rivers even.