The Beading Gem

Jewelry lovers are in for a visual treat if they were to go and see the latest movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby.  The tale of decadence, betrayal and murder is set in the 1920's.  From a jewelry design perspective, the movie beautifully evokes jazz age glamor with the stunning art deco pieces.

Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan

There are just a small handful of incredible artisans in the entire world who are capable of making architectural rings.  French jeweler, Phillipe Tournaire is one of them.

I've featured his luxury house rings before (see below). Here are his incredible cityscape rings, the latest additions to his architectural jewelry collection called Villa de Reve (dream house rings). The London Ring with Big Ben is shown above.

People of different cultures have worn tattoos for centuries. This type of body modification is still popular today. However bejeweled tattoos could well be a new trend.

Shown here is the world's most expensive tattoo. South African model, Minki van der Westhuizen is sporting 7.2 million South African rands or US$924,000 worth of diamonds.

You know the Swarovski company is on to a good thing when they sell loose crystals. They crop up everywhere. So for fans of the sparkly stuff, you can now get it in your dishware.  The luxury line, Prouna Jewel Collection  produces dishwasher safe fine bone china decorated with Swarovski crystals.


This is quite a feat because they had to first discover a way to bond the crystals to the china. So sure of their method, the company has a life time guarantee to replace any missing crystals.

Sometime ago, I wrote a post about the gemstones in skin care fad. Crushed pearls were used by Imperial Chinese women for centuries as a pigment and for its anti-aging properties (acts like a sunblock).



Lady Gaga, the singer and performance artiste skipped the pulverizing step and just glued pearl beads all over her face and her body when she performed at the amFAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research)annual gala last month. With white skin makeup, white pearl encrusted bikini jacket, hats and boots, she was a pearl wannabee in the flesh. I wonder if she used water soluble glue for easy removal?

Photographic Inspirations
Part 1 of 3
Many of us sell jewelry online. Those of you who do will agree taking good photographs is loads harder than making the jewelry. "Staging" the jewelry is also necessary to showcase the work. So one way to inspire our efforts is to view jewelry photo shoots by professional photographers and artistic directors.

I've featured some unusual photo shoots from time to time. Today's post appeals to the history buff in me -the French Revolution jewelry photo shoot.

You've got to be a hermit living on a desert island if you haven't heard about golfer Tiger Woods' SUV accident and the subsequent revelations about his numerous marital transgressions. He reportedly told his friend he would have to run to Zales and get a "Kobe Special" which he described as "A house on a finger". He was referring to the $4 million diamond ring Kobe Bryant's wife, Vanessa Bryant, received after the star athlete was acquitted of rape.

Unique Sparklers Part 2 of 2
It might be a little early for the "C" word for some of you but this amazing Christmas bauble has been making the news! It is made from 18-carat white gold and studded with over 1500 diamonds including 3 1-carat stones.The two orbital rings are bejeweled with 188 rubies.

Celebrities spend unreal sums of money on facials, hairstyling and other beauty treatments especially for big events like the Oscars. The latest spa trend amongst the rich and famous is the use of diamonds for massages.

The luxury treatment is delivered in the client's own homes by Spa on Location (Santa Monica, California) which teamed up with Hearts on Fire, the diamond company. Their "Dream Girl" Diamond massage uses $1 million in loose diamonds. One presumes the diamonds have been smoothed so they wouldn't be sharp. The cost of the massage? $25,000 - down from the $100,000 price tag when the above 2006 photo was taken.

Elite Choice also reported the use of 1.5 carats worth of powdered diamonds placed on the skin after a massage for a few minutes. The procedure claims to rid your body of of "electromagnetic toxins" from the everyday exposure to cell phones, computers and microwaves. I'm not sure how that is supposed to work. But one thing is certain. After a massage like that you will indeed be relieved of stress and a considerable amount of cash from your wallet.

Via Via and Via
___________________
The Beading Gem's Journal
Subscribe via RSS Via Email

The beauty industry has been adding gemstones into skincare products (see my past post: Gemstones in Skincare). It was only a matter of time before gemstones appeared in makeup. Now we have ground up gemstones in lipstick for extra pouty lips!

Guerlain, one of the world's oldest perfume houses recently launched their new Le Rouge G lipsticks made from finely milled rubies. It is being marketed as exceptionally radiant. That's because they are taking advantage of the fact that many gemstones and minerals are fluorescent - they glow under ultraviolet light. Rubies show red fluorescence under shortwave UV light. UV light is part of sunlight. I'm not sure whether there are enough rubies in the lipstick. If so, your Le Rouge G lips would likely glow red under the UV lights in discos too! Hotlips on the dance floor!

Indeed the term fluorescence comes from fluorite, one of my favorite gemstones. Way back in 1852, an English physicist named the phenomenon while working with fluorite. Gemologists now use UV light as a tool to help identify gemstones. Physicists use a ruby fluorescence method for their optical experiments. The picture below by Hannes Grobe shows fluorescent minerals under UV light. Pretty aren't they?



The packaging of the Rouge G lipstick is really cool. A renowned French jeweller, Lorenz Baumer designed the casing. He was inspired by ingots and developed the rounded casing from that idea. The lipstick case relies on a special magnetic mechanism which on the first click pops open the mirror.

How much is this going to cost you? You can purchase it from Neiman Marcus for $45. Can't afford the real McCoy? Then party on with UV reactive lipstick from UVGear (~$9).

References
Gem test by Emporia University
Ultraviolet light and its uses with fluorescent minerals
How are gemstones classified?
Notes on gemstone fluorescence

Via and Via
___________________
The Beading Gem's Journal
Subscribe via RSS Via Email

There is luxury jewelry and then there is insane luxury jewelry. This $4.5 million diamond and emerald studded titanium tiara was actually created for a dog.

Thai jewelry designer, Riwin Jirapolsek was not content to shower his much loved 15 year old Maltese pooch with all sorts of cute pet accessories. He actually used the 250 carats of gems he inherited from his mother! Needless to say, the tiara is not for sale but it recently got an airing down the runway of a Bangkok dog show. The designer plans to make a bejeweled hair clip next because the dog's fur blocks its view.

If only dogs could talk, especially this male dog. The indignity of it all!

Via


For more tutorials check out my Jewelry Making Tips

Liked what you read? Don't miss a post!

Subscribe via RSS OR Via Email* It's FREE!

*Click on the link in the confirmation email to activate subscription

Be a Fan!

Many of us love pearls. They are beautiful in jewelry and exude class. We tend to take it for granted the affordability of cultured pearls and forget natural pearls were once incredibly expensive because they were so rare. If not for Kokichi Mikimoto (1858-1954), they would have remained out of our reach.

He once said, "I would like to adorn the necks of all the women of the world with pearls." Perhaps not every woman on Earth but he has to a large extent succeeded because many ordinary women can indeed own pearls today.

Through dogged persistence, despite personal tragedy, natural disasters and a hostile natural pearl industry, this man managed to perfect the art of culturing round pearls and create a market for them.

His life is the classic rags to riches tale. He was born the eldest son of a poor Japanese noodle maker in Toba. He left school in his early teens to help support his family when his father fell ill. He made noodles for sale and also sold vegetables and eggs on the side. In 1875, a visiting American warship bought vegetables from his little boat - he caught the sailors' attention by his ability to juggle his cabbages and eggs with his feet!

With the money he made, he was able to take a holiday in the Greater Tokyo area. There he saw Chinese traders paying high prices for pearls found in akoya oysters the Japanese harvest for food (see my past post on the bare breasted Ama divers of Japan). The pearls were destined for medicinal use. When he got home, he was inspired to start his own business buying and selling pearls until supplies started to run out.

The next logical step was to make the pearls. He wasn't the first to try. Over the centuries, many people attempted to duplicate what nature made by chance. The Chinese in the 5th century AD for example, had already tried making mabe or hemi-spherical pearls by placing buttons or even lead Buddha medallions inside the oysters which then covered the foreign objects with pearl nacre. Mikimoto and two other Japanese men, Tokishi Nishikawa and Tatsuhei Mise worked out two different ways of making round pearls. The Mise-Nishikawa technique, still used today, turned out to be better than Mikimoto's own although he did perfect the former.

Mikimoto spent years struggling with many experiments and natural phenomena like algal blooms called red tides which sometimes destroyed his "crop". He also went heavily into debt trying to make his first mabe pearls and much later, round ones. Through this difficult early period, Mikimoto's wife, Ume, was his loving and stalwart partner. She encouraged her husband in his work even as creditors were pounding at the door. She died at 32 having lived long enough to see the first pearl produced. The grief stricken Mikimoto was left to raise 4 little girls and an infant son. For the rest of his life, he sometimes referred to pearls as teardrops.

From the first World War onwards, Japanese pearl farms were churning out pearls by the millions. Mikimoto then began marketing them abroad. His cultured pearls took the industry by storm. His pearls were labelled fakes by those who stood to lose a lot - natural pearl dealers. Eventually, the inevitable occurred - pearl prices crashed by 1930. Mikimoto in the meantime grew rich and was quite the showman, constantly promoting his pearls. He once publicly burned thousands of inferior pearls to emphasise the high quality of his pearls.

Mikimoto met many Americans, from his earliest contact as a teenager and later with traders from the Mississippi area who supplied him with the shells from American mussels such as the pig toe, washboard, ebony, elephant ear, pistol grip and heel-splitter (all highly colorful descriptive names for some pretty ugly mussels). The shells were and still are made into the "hearts", nuclei or starter beads for almost all round cultured pearls.

Mikimoto grew to like Americans so much, he publicly objected to his country's involvement in the Second World War. In honor-bound Japan, this was a remarkable act of defiance. Someone even sent him a sword and expected him to commit seppuku or hara kiri. He declared " I am a business man, not a soldier" and refused to comply. After the war, during the Allied occupation of Japan, returning GIs bought his pearls for their wives and sweethearts and the popularity of pearls soared.

By 1946 Mikimoto was listed as the richest man in Japan. Yet, he chose to live a very simple life in his old age. You can see pictures of his house and his belongings here. He died at 96 in 1954.



Today, Pearl Island where he owned one of his farms is a tourist destination complete with white suited female divers emulating the Ama. The area is now polluted and production has declined. But Mikimoto pearls are also grown elsewhere and they are still renowned for their beauty.

Last year, the Mikimoto company came out with the $1,000,000 pearl necklace I wrote about. This year, they have surpassed themselves with the $1,600,000 aptly named Goddess Necklace available from their New York store. 25 large (17.0 mm to 19.6 mm) silvery South Sea pearls make up this 18 inch necklace complete with a 7 carat diamond and platinum clasp. It took the company over 10 years to acquire these perfect pearls.

Via

References
Victoria Finlay (2005). Jewels: A Secret History. Sceptre.
Mikimotoamerica.com
Island Pearls' The Return of the American Pearl
Gemology Project : Pearl
___________________
The Beading Gem's Journal

Subscribe to THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL by Email
Subscribe in a reader

Sometimes the best ideas are there all along. It just takes someone to think just a little bit differently and wow! A design innovation is born. This is the story of a visionary master jeweler.

We all know pearls are created when some foreign material, most often a parasite, gets inside the oyster or mussel. It then gets repeatedly coated with pearl nacre which is a way the shellfish deals with the irritation. Cultured pearl farmers either use a tiny piece of shellfish mantle or a round mother of pearl bead to start a pearl.

Chi Huynh, the Vietnamese born, California based modern jewelry master behind Galatea, took that one extra step no one else had. Rather than the commonly used starter material, he placed diamonds instead inside black lipped oysters. His diamond in a pearl designs are spectacular because he intricately carves the pearls to reveal the diamonds inside.


His is an inspiring story. Like so many inventions, his innovation came about by accident when he unintentionally carved a Tahitian pearl too deeply and exposed the starter bead inside. A light turned on inside his head. Why not insert gemstones inside oysters? He was told by the Tahitian pearl experts it couldn't be done. What they really meant was no one had tried it before so they really didn't know and wouldn't help him. He didn't take no for an answer and tried it out on oysters farmed in Vietnam. As they say, the rest is history. He has gone on to win industry design awards.



This is one truly heart warming story, not just because he is now successful and respected for his art form but it is the culmination of a long and difficult journey for him. Chi was born during the Vietnam war. When South Vietnam fell to communist rule in 1975, the regime's twisted ideology meant educated and skilled people became pariah. He said, "My father, a respected jeweler, was put in jail after the Americans left. He feared for his children, so he started sending us in groups of two and three out of the country."

Imagine, a 12 year old boy, boarding a small boat with 53 others and setting off on a perilous journey to freedom. They were twice robbed by pirates of what little they had and they ran out of food and fuel. A passing ship rescued the traumatised group. Chi eventually arrived in the US in 1980. The experience marked him deeply for he now tries to see the beauty in every day life - a sweet life he does not take for granted.



Via and Via
___________________
The Beading Gem's Journal

Subscribe to THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL by Email
Subscribe in a reader

I had to share this photo for it is the closest most of us will come to really fabulous emeralds. The model is wearing a 28 million yuan or approximately US $3.71 million emerald pendant from a jewelry store in Nanjing, China.

Its provenance is fascinating for it dates back to 1790. It was a gift to the Qianlong Emperor (1711-1799) for his 80th birthday. The emerald is not only large but the green is close to that of imperial jade, the jadeite gemstone prized by the Chinese and probably the reason why it was chosen as a present for him. I wonder what he really thought of the emerald for he was mostly obsessed with imperial jade. This exquisitely lovely green shade of jade is also known as feitsu or "kingfisher" jade and remains the most sought after form today.

I wrote about the Qianlong Emperor and his jade obsession before. He was the "Son and Heaven" who squandered many lives to secure Burmese supplies of imperial jade. Before his reign, the Chinese only used nephrite, the other jade which is actually a totally different gemstone altogether. Nephrite jade is sometimes known as Ming jade because it was popular during the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644).

References
Chinese Imperial Jade
Wikipedia : Jade
___________________
The Beading Gem's Journal

$1,000,000 for a strand of pearls? I nearly choked! But that's what this rare mega strand of South Sea cultured AAA quality pearls costs from Mikimoto, the original cultured pearl company. This limited edition piece is available from their New York branch.



South Sea cultured pearls are actually produced in Broome in north-western Australia and are prized for their lovely satiny lustre. Silver white for the Asian market is the most sought after. Another reason why they are so expensive is their size - these are 15.06 x 17.24 mm in diameter. The reason why these seawater cultured pearls grow so large in this part of the world is due to a combination of warm sea temperatures and nutrient-rich tidal flows which the oysters thrive on. Julie, an Aussie expartriate from Broome (she attended today's workshop) said one particular pearl she remembered when she worked for a pearl company there was 22 mm extra lovely South Sea pearl. It fetched $175,000!

The pearls in this strand are remarkably uniform. Just think how many oysters they had to go through to get a matching set! They also took much longer to cultivate than regular pearls - 10 years. The art deco oval clasp is adorned with 11.92 carats of diamonds. All these factors go towards its luxury price tag.

"South Seas" is a misnomer for Australian's northern coastline is technically not in the South Seas. But the founder of the Mikimoto company, Kokichi Mikimoto, one of the first people who thought Broome might be a great location for pearl farming, considered anything south of Japan, the South Seas. So the name stuck.

He also said, "I would like to adorn the necks of all the women of the world with pearls" and he certainly did for a great many of us because his company made pearls much more affordable than natural ones. However, if he were alive today, he wasn't referring to this strand!

Alas, I don't have a million dollars spare so it'll have to be freshwater pearls for this artisan!

Via

NB This post has been submitted for ProBlogger's Killer Post Title competition.

Past Posts
In the Footsteps of a Pearl Dealer
Update on Cold Damage to Chinese Freshwater Pearls
Did Cleopatra swallow the pearl whole?
__________________
The Beading Gem's Journal