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Pearls are one of the few gifts I've never seen go wrong. They work for your mom, your sister, your best friend, and the person on your list who "doesn't really wear jewelry." The trick is picking the right pearl for the right person. I pick every pearl and stone that goes into my pieces myself, so I know them pretty well. Here's how I'd shop for everyone on your list this year. Pearl gifts for mom Most moms already have a strand of round white pearls tucked away somewhere. G

Come and learn why akoya pearls are so expensive and the differences between akoya pearls and freshwater pearls.

What decides freshwater pearl necklace price? A pearl jewelry maker explains why one costs $30 and another $300, and what to check before you buy online.

People sometimes ask why I gravitate toward baroque pearls instead of the classic round ones most people picture when they hear "pearl necklace." There are a few reasons, and they've built up over years of actually working with these things, not just admiring them. Round pearls feel too formal for everyday life A perfectly round, perfectly matched strand of pearls is beautiful, but it's also a little rigid. It belongs to a specific kind of occasion, the kind where everything

I hear this a lot: "I'd love to wear pearls more, but they feel too formal for everyday." The truth is, it's rarely the material. It's a handful of design choices — size, color, shape, and how much metal shows — that decide how dressed-up a piece actually feels. Usually it's a combination of these, not just one, and sometimes it's the same necklace, worn a little differently. Size Large pearls, all the same size, tend to feel more like a statement — the kind of piece that's c

Natural Freshwater Pearls I get asked this a lot — usually by someone holding a strand they inherited, or eyeing something online that looks too good to be priced that low. There's no single trick that settles it, but there are a few things I check every time I'm sorting through a new batch of pearls, and together they're pretty reliable. Shape Real pearls are rarely perfectly round. A pearl forms slowly, layer by layer, inside a living creature — not in a mold. Some imperfec

Most people, hearing the name "Edison pearl" for the first time, ask the obvious question: does this have something to do with Thomas Edison, the inventor? The answer is: almost nothing, and yet everything. The name traces back to a line often attributed to Edison — that his laboratory could produce almost anything, except two things: diamonds and pearls. Decades later, pearl farmers in China developed a technique that quietly broke the second half of that claim, and the pear

Every piece of jewelry meets the same quiet enemies: salt from the skin, moisture from the air, the small accumulated friction of being worn. Most of what we're asked about a finish — will it fade, will it turn my skin green, will it still look like this in a year — comes down to how that finish handles exposure over time. We wanted an answer we could stand behind, not just repeat. So we ran our own test. What 18K PVD Titanium Steel Actually Means The two words that matter mo

When someone asks me which pearl color they should choose, my first instinct is always: the one you can't stop looking at. But I also know that when you're staring at a screen trying to decide between blush pink and dusty lavender, that's not always a helpful answer. So here's how I actually think about pearl color — not as a set of rules, but as a way of finding your way back to what you already know you want. Because pearl color has a mood. And once you know the mood you're

A 2,000-year-old craft tradition — and why you've never heard of it until now.

It was 2020, and like most people, I wasn't going anywhere. What started as a way to survive four walls and two small kids somehow became Mooncord.

There is a Freshwater Pearl That Looks Like a Star =================================================== Freshwater star pearls The first time I held a star-shaped freshwater pearl, I laughed a little. Five rounded points, a plump center—it looked like someone’s drawing of a star, only with the soft glow of a pearl. It seemed too whimsical to have grown inside a mussel. But that is where its nacre came from. Star-shaped cultured freshwater pearls are real pearls. Their shape is