The opening scene of the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” features legendary actress Audrey Hepburn wearing a black dress and a pearl necklace, and standing outside the Tiffany & Co.’s flagship jewelry store on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Choosing Tiffany’s was not a coincidence: In the early 20th century, Tiffany’s sought to set up shop at a prestigious New York location. At the time, the now-iconic building was appraised at $1 million, and Tiffany’s acquired it by paying with a single pearl.
Those were the prices for pearls in the early 20th century, and not by chance, as for millennia the pearl was the queen of all gemstones.
It is unclear exactly when man began collecting pearls and wearing them as jewelry, but archeological findings suggest that people used to wear gold jewelry set with pearls as far back as Roman times, and perhaps even earlier.
Pearls were particularly difficult to come by in the ancient world, as they needed to be harvested by expert pearl divers. Pearls were considered a symbol of wealth and aristocracy, and their rareness created a great demand for the precious stones by royal families and the nobility.
Embellishing any jewelry
The golden age of pearls did not end with the ancient era. Even today, pearls are still used to embellish jewelry, and diamonds continue to bring out the best in them. Nowadays it is also customary to grow pearls of different colors, including gold, pink, gray, bluish, black and more. These colors allow jewelers to create spectacular combinations of pearls, gold, and gemstones in matching colors.
Israeli diamond dealers and jewelers are familiar with the beauty of the pearl and they are currently designing unusual jewelry combining pearls with diamonds.
“The wide range of pearl colors allows for great leeway in the design,” Yael Tavisal, of IDC House of Diamonds, explained. “Golden pearls work beautifully with white gold and diamonds, and the pearl’s silver hue adds an interesting shine to any piece of jewelry.”
KGH Jewelry also uses pearls to create unique designs. “Our business is based on producing clasps for pearl necklaces, so it was only natural that we use our expertise to produce pearl jewelry,” Eitan Koenig of KGH said. “Working with pearl necklaces’ clasps, we build a dual mechanism to prevent the clasp from opening, because it is very upsetting to see a chain break and the pearls going everywhere.”
Jewelry designer Roni Tochner
says she “chose to design hand-made pearl earrings with gold spheres that were produced using granulation, which is an ancient goldsmithing technique.” The design echoes the pearl’s round shape in its gold embellishment, and according to Tochner, “Making the gold spheres is complex: First, using fire, a gold wire is made into a sphere. Same-length wires will produce identical spheres, which are then welded onto the setting or the earrings.”
Leibish & Co. say they “mainly design colored diamond jewelry, which is the linchpin of our business, but when we recently designed a ring with a 2.23-carat pink diamond, we chose to surround it with white diamonds, black rhodium, pink gold and pink pearls. It was just a celebration of pink.”
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Iris Hortman
