Tagged with 'Akoya pearls'

When the sun is shining, the sea turns a petrol green colour and with that magnificent skyline, there can be few better ways to get to work in the morning or places for buying pearls.

For the last four days, Hong Kong has been host to the largest Spring Jewellery Show in Asia, with more than 30,000 buyers and suppliers attending from around the world – a record attendance despite recent times.

In pearl terms, Hong Kong has grown to be one of the most important pearl trading centres in the world and this is one of the key dates in the annual calendar for buying pearls. It is hard to comprehend the size of the pearl industry until confronted by more than 10,000 square metres of pearls for sale at this Jewellery Show.

The new season’s freshwater pearls from China are available to the market for the first time and prestigious pearl famers such as Robert Wan from Tahiti and Paspaley from Australia offer their pearls at auction to a select specialist group of buyers.

Pearl prices are beginning to rise again. Demand for these incredible gems is increasing, particularly from customers in India and China, whilst production over the last two years has been reduced as pearl farmers have weathered the global crisis.

This is particularly true of larger Freshwater, Akoya, Tahitian and South Sea pearls and higher grade quality pearls are in much shorter supply now. With minimum lead times of 18 months to over 3 years for farmers to increase their pearl harvest, it is likely that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, especially for the premium grade pearls.

It is a good time to buy pearls and we will have many beautiful pieces of pearl jewellery to show you at Winterson over the coming months.

Since the first successful attempts to culture an Akoya pearl over a century ago, Akoya pearls are considered to be one of the most dazzling types of pearls available.

These saltwater pearls are cultured in the Pinctada fucata oyster, which is historically farmed in Japanese coastal waters. Other regions that are known for culturing Akoya pearls include China and Vietnam.

The oyster itself is small in comparison to other species and typically produces just one pearl of between 3mm and 10mm in diameter in each individual oyster.

Seed pearls are tiny pearls smaller than 3mm that are also produced in this oyster as a by-product of pearl culturing. These tiny gems give a delicate finish to jewellery as seen the Beau Seed Pearl and Diamond Ring by designer Alice Cicolini below.

Due to increasing levels of water pollution, Akoya pearls larger than 9.5mm of good quality are rarely cultured today and command increasingly high values compared to pearls that are more than 0.5mm smaller in diameter.

The proportion of round pearls produced by the Akoya oyster is relatively high and their near perfect shape has been an emblem of their quality together with their characteristic white colour.

Although at first glance, Akoya pearls may appear white, they often have overtones of pink, cream, silver and blue. Occasionally the pearls may have a rich cream to golden colour such those in the golden Akoya pearl necklace below.

The classic pink overtone is usually as a result of a traditional dye treatment by Japanese farmers called 'pinking'. Akoya pearls never come in dark hues that are typical of Tahitian pearls and black Akoya pearls are always the result of colour treatments.

Their size, lustre and colour mean that Akoya pearls are very well suited to making classic designs of Akoya pearl necklaces, bracelets, pendants, rings and Akoya pearl earrings.

A jewellery box staple is the Akoya pearl jewellery set, worn as every day attire, a wedding or an evening occasion.

Reinventing itself, the beloved Akoya pearl is also favored by designers in contemporary designs such as this Tsavorite Garnet and Akoya pearl pendant by designer Sophie Breitmeyer, where the classic round qualities of the lustrous pearl is contrasted with the more colourful modern gemstone.

If you would like to learn more about pearls, and what you should look for, read our Buying Pearls guide here.

A natural pearl is a pearl that has been formed entirely accidentally and with no intervention from humans at all.

Falling in love with the necklace, entrepreneurial Maisie Plant offered Cartier a swap of her 52nd Street and Fifth Avenue townhouse for the item. For an additional $100 in cash, Cartier bought the landmark building that it still occupies today.

Two years later, Kokichi Mikimoto, an innovative entrepreneur from Japan that was widely credited with developing a patented method for producing the cultured pearl, launched his products onto the London market at a 25% discount to the price of natural pearls.

By the time Mrs Plant died in 1956 the Cartier necklace of pearls was auctioned off for just $150,000 as cheaper cultured pearls emerged and prices of natural pearls fell. In recent times, however, natural pearls have seen a resurgence of desirability, with the famed Baroda Pearls, a double strand of 68 natural pearls, being sold at auction at Christies in 2007 for a record $7.1 million.

All the pearls that Winterson sells are cultured pearls. We take very great care in selecting the best available for use in our jewellery.