Baroque Pearls vs Round Pearls — Why I Choose Baroque
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 else about you is also polished and put-together. That's not most of my days. Most of my days involve picking up my kids, running between errands, working at my desk. I wanted pearls that could come with me into that life, not just the version of me that shows up twice a year for something formal.
On the days I teach, I sometimes put on a blazer and a shirt with a high collar, which leaves no room for a necklace, so earrings are where the pearls go. I'd pair with Gilded Ash, as the Keshi pearls are irregular enough that they never look like I've dressed for an event, even next to a blazer.
Baroque shapes give me room to actually design
This is the part that keeps me interested, piece after piece. A round pearl is a round pearl, and there's only so much you can do with it. Baroque pearls come in shapes I couldn't have planned if I tried: biwa pearls that stretch long and narrow, which is most of what you'll find in my Quiet Forms pieces; keshi pearls with no core at all, just layers of nacre; and every so often, a pearl comes out looking almost like a heart or a tiny star. Designing around a shape that already has personality is a completely different kind of fun than designing around a bead. The pearl tells me something before I've decided anything.
Baroque Biwa stick pearl bracelet 
Baroque biwa pearl earrings 
Baroque biwa stick pearl necklace 
Freshwater star pearl lariat necklace 
Baroque pearl earrings long dangle 
Baroque pearl heart necklace
They remind me that we don't need to be perfect
This is the part that's harder to explain, but it's the real reason. A baroque pearl is never going to be flawless, and it's not supposed to be. Every dent and every asymmetry is just what happens when something forms slowly, under pressure, over time. I think about women the same way. We're not meant to be uniform or perfectly smooth. Whatever shape we've turned out to be, and however we got there, there's still a light that comes from inside, the same way a good pearl still catches light from underneath no matter how uneven its surface is. That's what I'm actually making when I make these pieces. Not perfection. Just something that's unmistakably, individually itself.
If you want to see what that looks like in practice, you can find it throughout Mooncord Studio.
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