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PEARLS BY THE BAY

PEARLS BY THE BAY

PEARLS BY THE BAY
Hosted by KOJIMAPEARL AND PACIFICPEARLS ...
Our NEXT PEARLS BY THE BAY IS MAY 21st 2023
(stay tuned for our upcoming lecturers, special events, and ticket sales)
Read below of what this special celebration day is all about! 
We gather in an open air ball room at the Casa Madrona Hotel and Spa (Sausalito) : perched over the stunning San Francisco Bay.. to honor the essence, history, fashion and legends of pearls.
a delicious lunch spread is catered by Poggio Trattoria : attendees have consistently rated the food 5 stars! 
We have a fantastic lecture series .. enjoy the chance to meet (IN PERSON) pearl farmers from around the world describe their labor of love and check out the beauties they have brought along to share.  Hear from industry leaders and icons about the ancient trade in pearls, the history of cultured pearls and the recent changes to both the culturing processes and the fashion that drives the market. We have been working hard to bring you never before heard or seen of pearls and give you a chance to meet the people who care for them. 
Past lecturers have included: 
The (in)FAMOUS Douglas Mc Laurin of Hermosillio Mexico: 
Marine biologist extraordinaire, renowned historian in pearling world wide, keeper of all pearl producing species names, believer in all magic and science, reiki master, vegan and the life of every party.
Douglas has the rare ability to take a highly scientific topic and make it digestible, poignant and funny.
Ted Talks got the idea from listening to him.
An aquaculture convention isn’t the same without him!
We are always happier and LEARNING in the presence of Douglas! 
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Dr. Ruben Araya and Jaime Maturana (M.A) joined us all the way from Chile and 
for the FIRST TIME IN NORTH AMERICA
presented their research and successful work in
CULTURING ABALONE PEARLS!
For hundreds of years, many have tried to do what they have now perfected.. and it is extremely rare to be able to hear directly from those who develop cultured pearls in a NEW SPECIES. Up until now we have only ever known mabé, or natural wild found abalone pearls.. now they can be cultured and this is BIG NEWS in the pearl world.
Not only did the team work tirelessly to perfect this culturing technique, THEY ARE MAKING IT OPEN SOURCE in an effort to support those who want to make their own business of culturing abalone pearls. 
(because graceful is a pearl!) 
Dr. Ruben and Jaime gave a fantastic presentation and brought with them several examples of their work. 
It was a deep honor to have them with us for Pearls By The Bay 2022!
watch this short video they shared with us HERE
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jewelry media mogul, executive director of the CPAA (Cultured Pearl Association of America)
Jennifer has been published in just about every jewelry magazine under the sun!
For decades she has travelled to gem shows far and wide, documenting trends in the market and meeting designers big and small. 
Jennifer gave use a fantastic lecture on her favorite jewelry designers and how they use pearls in their work! It was very inspiring to see the ways these brilliant minds are showcasing our favorite gem! 
It's always a pleasure to have Jennifer in the building and the spread of pearl knowledge owes her a deep bow! 
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Mr. Bell
Mr. Bell is a gemologist and specialist in natural pearls. He lives in San Francisco with his partner in life known only as Miss Walker. It is witnessed by some and rumored by many that they do address one another in private as Mr. Bell and Miss Walker. As a dealer of natural pearls Mr. Bell travels the world and may show up unexpectedly in the far reaches of the globe wherever there may be interest in the sale or purchase of such a rarity. He is regarded throughout the Middle East as the authority on natural pearls, a subject, which is dear to the heart of the Arab world. It is believed that in order for a pearl to be worthy of adorning a Muslim, the pearl must have occurred naturally and taken form with out the provocation of human hands. In this regard the natural pearl is considered by the devout of the Islamic faith as a pure and holy gem sent directly from God. Mr. Bell routinely appears in the Middle East to address international pearl symposiums where his eloquence on the subject of the holy pearl is legendary. He has gained the respect of gem collectors around the world and is considered by many who seek his counsel in the purchase of natural pearls, to have the last word.
Mr. Bell gave the most heart felt lecture about his life in pearls.. recounting some of his most memorable adventures on the hunt for natural pearls spanning the last 50 plus years! He spoke in depth about the history of the natural pearl trade in the Middle East and how it is the cornerstone of much of the regions wealth and how this history has shaped modern day dynamics around the globe. 
Mr. Bell and Miss Walker are true pearls and we were truly blessed to have them in attendance. 
Special thanks to Miss Walker for bringing photos she has taken on some of the natural pearl adventures!
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Alex Collins : black pearl farmer from Takaroa French Polynesia
Alex was born in Mexico City to an Irish-American father and a Chinese-Polynesian mother.
After university, he opened a black pearl jewelry store with his brother in La Jolla California. As his interest in pearls ran parallel to discovering his deep ancestral roots in Polynesia. Tracing his Chinese-Polynesian side back to pre-European contact..he uncovered extensive family properties in far away islands. One of which was the epicenter of the Tahitian pearl world , the island of Takaroa. He discarded his “western” ideals, formalities and education and plunged head first into the murky primitive waters of Takaroa.. that was 1999.. the rest is history. 
Alex spoke beautifully of what goes into farming pearls on a very remote atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.. it is NOT easy work! His story of how pearls FOUND HIM and the passion he has for this work were inspirations felt throughout the group! 
Thank you Alex for making the journey and bringing the islands with you! 
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Fuji Voll : second generation owner of Pacific Pearls (Tokyo, Hong Kong, California)
 
Born into the  the pearl business in the late 1940's: pearling means more than a source of income to Fuji. There is a pride taken in sharing information, as well as delighting in the most unusual pearls he can find.. these two principals of how he has run his business have made him well known throughout the industry. 
Man of great adventure tales himself.. his lectures are best read after the fact so as to absorb all the layers. 
Here is a copy of his speech from Pearls By The Bay 2019: 

As shady as a pearl dealer Pearls are called the first gems, for they could be appreciated before the invention of lapidary arts. Naturally, some individuals collected them, and if you had to as the price, you could not afford any. As knowledge of pearls and their sources spread, rulers particularly in the Middle East and South Asia competed for them by the notoriously inefficient method of having their expendable slaves harvest hundreds, even thousands of mollusks per desirable pearl. The notion that they were suited to use by women probably did not emerge until imperialists from areas with fewer mollusks got into the rapacious game. I imagine pearls dealers of the era faced persecution and played for high stakes, much like traffickers in scarce and wondrous drugs do to this day. In European countries without suitable colonies, indigenous freshwater pearls were harvested with great care. I have met several people in Germany and Austria, with names like "Bachfischer", who are descendants of those entrusted with that work: to know the location of every mussel in their bailiwick, examine them for irregularities in shell growth that might intimate the presence of a sizable pearl, and harvest it without killing the mussel, some of which have a life expectancy exceeding 100 years. I have seen photos of pictures in South German and Austrian churches, depicting the severed hands of mussel poachers. While cultivation of mobe is said to have begun in China as early as the sixth century, pearls were more in demand as medicine there well into the 20th. As pearl powder is not distinguishable from that made from shells, it was the custom in many parts of Asia for apothecaries to stock natural seed pearls. The reasons to prefer pearls, possibly remains of bring parasites they contained, were never clear to me, but now that have, and are aware of pollution, organic source Calcium carbonate is deprecated. Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century naturalist revered as the father of modern taxonomy, is credited with the first serious attempt to cultivate pearls (in German "Vollperlen"), which mobe are not, but never got past the experimental stage. I am sure most of you are familiar the development of a cultured pearl industry in Japan, which despite a wartime hiatus, came to dominate the world's market for 40 years. By the 20th century, pearl dealing had been decriminalized, but dealers were as a whole more slippery than the carpet folks. For a start, what other products, with the more recent exception of synthetic minerals, are termed cultured but do not depend on the work of microorganisms? On one hand, it was desirable to confuse downstream dealers as well as consumers, for instance with units of measurement. In Japan's draconian metrication program, possession of a ruler in traditional units became a crime, and momme scales are only legal for the pearl trade. On the other, failure to be open about the practicalities of cultivation backfired, though arguably it might have been hard to make a dent in marketers' ignorance. These folks seized upon perfect spherical shape as the most important measure of "quality", forcing cultivators to make thin-coated pearls of vastly inferior durability to satisfy this misguided requirement. It took decades for factors other than unnatural shape and color to be widely appreciated. Color treatment (mainly bleaching) predates cultivation, and its denial, sometimes through ignorance, is still the rule among pearl dealers. Our family business has always been among the minority debunking widely believed prevarications. In my product descriptions I prominently write "dyed" if I suspect any pearls to be outside the natural range for the type... but stop short of becoming the only dealer in the world (to my knowledge) to write "bleached"on an invoice. Early freshwater pearls were all non-nucleated; while their natural shapes severely limited their acceptance in established consumer countries, the bulk of their much smaller production was regularly snapped up by dealers serving countries where natural pearls were known, and buyers rejected the shapes of nucleated pearls. I see the emergence of China as the major producer of the world's pearls (roughly 80% by weight and 40% in terms of value), decried by many dealers as a debasement of the product, as ushering in a "golden age" in diversity and value for money in history. My company remains a major supplier of vestiges of (chiefly baroque) freshwater pearls actually cultivated in Japan; this does not appear to require keeping secret my opinion that the vastly more abundant in-body bead-nucleated pearls from China are in any way inferior or readily distinguishable, and they constitute the bulk of the pearls sold by stating or implying Japan origin for at least the past 30 years. My father, Rudolf Voll (1911-2008) and a first generation pearl dealer, concluded a video for German TV with the words: A woman does not need a pearl. It is the pearl that needs the woman.

 

WHEN THE LECTURES ARE FINISHED, we have a cocktail party, show and tell gathering! This is when you get to see what people have brought up close and personal, catch up with your old friends and make new ones! This is a FANTASTIC warm group of people, and I am honored to call each one of them a friend! 

Thank you all for joining us and we are working to make next year even sweeter!

 

Some call it Bingo.. WE CALL IT PEARL! 

(pearl bingo for prizes is always good for some laughs!)

 

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