Pearl Society

Premiere of Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Story of Pearls & Booksigning

Exciting news for our Pearl Society members! Author Stephen Bloom (2 time Pearl Society speaker) is about to release his new book about pearls, Tears of Mermaids, and we are the 'premier reading' by this best-selling author to inaugurate his national tour! Sunday, November 29, 2009, from 3:00 - 5:00pm Mr. Bloom will present his racy, well researched and exciting new book, Tears of Mermaids and conduct a book signing. The Pearl Society will have some books on hand for you to purchase and have personally signed by Stephen Bloom himself!  If you are interested in placing an advance order, please send us an email to: contact@evejewelry.com.

As Mr. Bloom writes to Eve Alfillé, Pearl Society Founder, "Yours would be my premiere reading, and that makes perfect sense since so much of the book originated through you and the Pearl Society."

More details of this great event will be posted later.  Mark your calendars as this is an event not to be missed!!

Fake Pearls on the Cover of a Fashion Magazine Revealed!

Gem expert and Pearl Society friend, Gary Roskin wrote an expose about "pearls" shown on cover of the July 2009 fashion magazine, InStyle.

Mr. Roskin, G.G., FGA, is a gemmologist and author, as well as the former gemstone editor for JCK magazine. This Summer he launched the Roskin Gem News Report Web site (www.roskingemnews.com), which covers gemstones and gem-related topics. He and New York based pearl expert, Arman Asher, of Albert Asher Pearls, did a bit of investigating to uncover the truth about the large, brightly colored strands of "pearls" actress Michelle Pfeiffer was photographed wearing.  The full story is below, reprinted with the author's permission.

Our thanks to both Gary Roskin & Armand Asher for their efforts to keep consumers in the know on real pearls!

Pearl Week 2009 part 2 - Sunday, August 30th Pearl Society event

Event II – Pearls and the Secondary Market: What Happens to Your Unwanted Jewelry?
Sunday, August 30, 2009

3pm to 5pm
at the Eve J. Alfillé Gallery
623 Grove Street, Evanston, IL

At its Sunday August 30, 2009 meeting, The Pearl Society will welcome Ruth Thuston, G.G., Chicago director of Circa, who will address the topic of the secondary pearl and jewelry market.

Circa is an international business organization with the slogan “We take it from here.” They provide a simplified, expeditious buying service for no-longer-needed jewelry.  Their elegant advertising now blankets the nation. Pearl Society members also will learn what happens to the jewels once they have been acquired, a complex and fascinating look into the little-known secondary market.

While Pearl Society founder Eve Alfillé generally suggests redesigning family gems so they suit a new generation owner, sometimes more value can be realized by putting a particularly attractive period piece up for sale.

Ruth Thuston spent 20 years of her career consulting, singing and counseling before pursuing her passion for jewelry by first studying gemology as a GIA distance student and then selling jewelry in two of Chicago’s finest jewelry stores. Ruth is currently the Chicago Director of CIRCA, a national jewelry buying company headquartered in New York.



RSVP: 847-869-7920 or email contact@evejewelry.com
Please RSVP Now – space is limited

Pearl Week 2009 part 1 - Thursday, August 27th Pearl Society event

Event I – War With The Newts: A Next Theater Event
Thursday, August 27, 2009

6 pm to 8:30 pm
at the Eve J. Alfillé Gallery
623 Grove Street, Evanston, IL

Who are the Newts? And why do they find the pearls?
“War with the Newts” an upcoming play, will be the topic at a party Next Theater will hold at the Eve J. Alfillé Gallery on Thursday, August 27 for their donors and guests, including members of The Pearl Society.
At this event, designer Eve Alfillé will present and discuss a collection of rare natural pearls, while members of the cast will present a scene from the play, a feature of the theater’s new season.

RSVP: Jason Southerland, jasonsoutherland@nextheater.org
or call the Gallery at 847-869-7920.
Please RSVP Now – space is limited

About the play:
WAR WITH THE NEWTS
By Jason Loewith and Justin D.M. Palmer
Based on the novel by Karel Capek
World Premiere
April 15 – May 16, 2010

Can one man stop an empire? In 1936, Czech-born Karel Capek wrote a spooky, fantastical novel about the discovery of an intelligent race of giant salamanders, which humanity enslaves for profit and national advantage. This highly-anticipated adaptation comes to us from Jason Loewith and Artistic Associate Justin D.M. Palmer in collaboration with puppet designer Michael Montenegro. On the heels of an enlightening research trip to the Czech Republic, the artistic team has truly unlocked the theatrical magic of this portentous story. Brought to life with pools, puppets and projections, War With the Newts is an incredibly timely satire about a global economy planting the seeds of its own destruction.

"Capek had in mind the totalitarian deluge that [in 1938] began to engulf Europe. But his satire aims, above all, at human blindness and greed. The enemy is always within, he reminds us."
—Heda Kovaly, New York Times Book Review

The Dubai Pearl Museum - Heidi Heutel Bohn

Bank assets are usually measured in bars of gold, or more likely securities stored as certificates.  But at its recent meeting, The Pearl Society viewed a most uncommon form of bank asset: natural pearls from the Persian Gulf!  Heidi Heutel Bohn, recently returned from that region, charmed and enlightened the large audience at a recent meeting with the account of her visit to the National Bank of  Dubai and its little known Pearl Museum.

 

 A map of the United Arab Emirates showed Dubai's position near the Oman peninsula, whereas Abu Dhabi, its rival, lies within the Gulf's curving littoral.  While Abu Dhabi possesses numerous natural offshore islands, Dubai is nearing completion of three artificial islands in shapes such as the palm.

 

But Bohn noted a slowdown in the frantic pace of construction in Dubai since her previous trip two years ago, when one third of the world's cranes were in use there.  She also was fascinated by the diversity of nationalities present, among both the workers and the visitors.

 

To  gain access  to the Pearl museum, our intrepid heroine introduced herself and her traveling companions as a delegation form The Pearl Society in Chicago - resulting in immediate entry and a guided tour.  The Museum was opened in 2003; its objective is to help preserve the colorful history of the pearl divers and merchants of Arabia, and plunge the viewer into an evocation of life before the discovery of oil.

Most evocative was the Dubai Pearl Museum's beautifully realized film, which Ms. Bohn brought to our May 31st meeting, recreating the dangerous and precarious existence of the erstwhile divers, culminating in a live interview with the last of the Dubai divers, a muscular fellow.  As in today's Dubai, divers were drawn in from other lands but according to a sheikh, "we treated them like brothers".

 

The Museum honors the late Ali Bin Abdullah Al Owais, a pearl trader and originator of the collection, and his son, Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais, the first chairman of the Bank of Dubai, a businessman and poet, reputed to have amassed one of the largest pearl collections in the world, the incredible sight captured on film and presented by Heidi at the meeting. Indeed, the innumerable lustrous and valuable pearls could be seen, nestled in red silk (not velvet as previously reported). This was Bohn's second visit to Dubai since she was not able to the rare pearls amassed by the Museum on her first trip.

 

 

Pearl Society meeting Sunday, May 31st

Just returned from throbbing Dubai, intrepid voyager
Heidi Heutel Bohn brings the inside tale (and autho-
rized images) of the famed but seldom seen
Dubai Pearl Museum. In fact, when our May 2008 guest
speaker, David Hampe, was here he said it was nearly
impossible to gain permission to visit the Dubai
Museum, which is located inside the Bank of Dubai.
Guided by its conservator, Bohn was able to access its
incredible storehouses of rare natural pearls, the treasury
of Eastern potentates. Reports Bohn: “I was nonplussed by
the traditional presentation of the pearls. Apparently pearls
can only be shown against a background of intense red
fabric. They were heaped in bowls lined with red velvet.”
Dubai, on the Persian Gulf, was long a capital of pearl
diving. To reclaim the prestige of this long historical asso-
ciation, it recently organized the first ever Dubai Pearl
Congress.  Even though Islamic mores inveigh against
pearl culture, preferring the natural gem, the hope was to
make Dubai a world center of all pearl trade, natural and
cultured as well.

Though Dubai is growing rapidly into a cosmopolitan
hub of the Middle East, it is also concerned with the
maintenance of traditional values. We do not know
whether Heidi Heutel Bohn had to be veiled to travel that
city. Find out when Heidi shares her experiences at the
next meeting of The Pearl Society.

Please join us Sunday, May 31, 2009
3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
at the Eve J. Alfillé Gallery, 623 Grove St., Evanston
Refreshments will be served!
Please RSVP Now – space is limited
847-869-7920 or email: contact@evejewelry.com

Mystery of the 30th Anniversary Pearl!

In response to an inquiry, I recently unraveled the Mystery of the 30th Anniversary Pearl! 

As founder of The Pearl Society, I was approached by an individual searching for the origin of the designation of Pearls as the traditional 30th anniversary gift.  

In The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, Dover reprint edition, in his chapter on Birthstones,  Kunz gives the definitive source of the generally accepted birthstone list (p.317): it was approved by the National Association of Jewellers at a meeting in Kansas City in August of 1912, (with small emendations since that time.-ed.)  

But we were looking for anniversaries, not birthdays.  I pressed on. 

Kunz devotes great detail to the story behind the idea of natal and Zodiac gems.  The idea is first mentioned in late Roman times, by the historian Josephus in the 1st century of the Common Era, then by St Jerome in the 5th C.  Based largely on the 12 gems of the priestly breastplate in the Bible, the list went through a number of adjustments, with pearls the birthstone for June, along with moonstone.  

Finally, on page 337, I found a list of wedding anniversary gems, with Pearls for the 30th (the 3rd is linen). It turns out  the Father of U.S. Gemologists, George Frederic Kunz, is the source!   No accreditation, even though Kunz waxes detailed and eloquent about the six other lists in this chapter on Natal Stones.

Here are the 7 lists:
1. The most common, derived from the  Hebrew Priest's breastplate.
2. Talismanic gems derived from the  twelve guardian angels (no pearl among those)
3. A list of U.S. birthstones  
4. A Hindu list of birthstones  (June is pearl, as in the commonly accepted U.S. one)
5. Gems of Weekdays (Talismanic gem: Sunday is pearl) 6. Gems of the Hours (night hours, day hours)         
 
and finally, without any discussion of origin:           
7. Gems of Wedding Anniversaries .. THAT IS THE ONE!

-Eve

Wild Pearls - Keshis

Eve explains Keshi Pearls

First of all, Keshi in Japanese means 'poppy seed'. It was the name given to the tiny pearls found when they opened Akoya oysters in Japan and expected to find round pearls, but the nucleus might have been expelled, and some tiny pearls like poppy seeds formed instead. They are not exactly natural (non-nucleated) pearls since the oyster had been stimulated by man. Perhaps some bits of the implanted tissue had loosened, but they are not  a cultured pearl either, so the name Keshi stuck. Eventually people decided to drill and to string those tiny irregular but pretty pearls, and make them into multistrand chokers, usually not knotted, and fairly expensive because of all the labor.
 
Then, in Australia and Tahiti, when the same thing occurred, the keshis were obviously larger, but still interestingly shaped, and very pretty. Having no nucleus meant all nacre, and often very lustrous – great for rings, earrings, and single strand necklaces, and expensive because they are rare.

The GIA called them 'adventitious' pearls ( wild, or happenstance pearls), i.e., not cultured, but not exactly natural.
 
Then came China. The Chinese were excited to cash in on the demand for pearls, and they did not really care about, or understand existing terminology. So for instance, they looked at the now extinct Japanese Lake Biwa pearls... well, their pearls were freshwater too, odd-shaped, so they called them Biwa too, no matter that they had nothing to do with lake Biwa! Sigh.. what could the world do?
 
Now the Chinese came up with another pearl idea: When they started culturing coin pearls, which have a nucleus, they would harvest the pearls carefully, then put the mussels back in the water for a year without renucleating them, just to see what would happen: well, strange petal-like pearls would form in the old pearl sac, second-generation, or born-again pearls, as they were called in Chinese.   
 
Then someone in China looked at what would be a better name for trade, and came upon the word Keshi. At first, the rest of the world was resistant: real Keshis were formed differently, they occurred in the original production cycle INSTEAD of the original pearl that was expected. But then they rationalized that there were similarities: both types of pearl occurred without a nucleus, both had accidental shapes that could not be controlled... why fight it? Once again, Chinese dictated the terminology, and so the dealers who tell you their pearls are keshi are just following the (now) generally accepted custom.  If you can't beat them..

A Question of Timing - The World Pearl Forum in Dubai February 2009

For those Pearl-lovers who are interestd, the World Pearl Forum, will take place at The Hotel Atlantis, Palm Jumeirah, in Dubai, February 17 & 18, 2009.

Note from the BlogMaster: Those warm sands still look pretty good from our Wintry Chicago climes, in spite of the current economic conditions. We remain more optimistic, pearls are still beautiful and to be very much enjoyed and treasured, and they can be surprisingly affordable. There is still nothing like real pearls to make a woman look her most radiant! 

"Moon Maiden" pistachio cultured Tahitian pearl necklace  in 18k green gold, by Eve J. Alfillé from her "Antiquities Series".

Wedding Day Jewelry for the Bride

Bridal Day Jewels — Don't let the poor bride spend $500 on faux bridal jewellery for her big day, says Eve Alfillé of Eve Alfillé Designs, Evanston, Ill.
"Suggest taking the bride's (or her mother’s or grandmother's) diamond studs and attaching them to long fine chains or to straight 20-gauge wires as drop earrings for the wedding day, perhaps set in a bezel rather than prongs.

Then after the wedding, the bride can come in to have the chains shortened at no charge, as your gift to the couple." She advises creating jewellery that is convertible because there is life after the wedding. "Even if she opts for a ready-made pair of earrings, suggest making them convertible, with dangles that detach. If she is going to wear her diamond studs, you can make her wonderful drops to add to them.

Remind her that a wedding is theatre, and people need to see her from a distance. Similarly, if the bride is going to wear her mom's pearls, tell her they will look more up-to-date with a delicate enhancer of pavé diamonds, or the addition of a South Sea pearl in a matching shade. Suggest incorporating the groom's birthstone somewhere in the piece."

Alfillé says families often come up with odd leftover diamonds or other smaller gems from various sources that can be used to create a new heirloom.
"Have the bride and her family put each little diamond in a small bag labeled with the name of the person in the family it comes from. You can create a special bangle for the bride to wear at the wedding, with each of these stones set into it. No need to set them symmetrically if the stones are all different – that is the charm of the piece. Then suggest having the name of each donor in the family engraved on the back near its stone – a keepsake to pass on for generations."

"And remember, that pearls look wonderful on a bride. And, with today's wide array of different pearls available, there is something for every bride, and every budget! And, in addition to making the bride look radiant, they also photograph beautifully!