There’s always been beauty and quality associated with natural pearls,” points out Simon Teakle, antique and period jewelry specialist at Betteridge jewelers in Greenwich, Connecticut. “It’s about rarity combined with the subtle nuances of size, shape and color.”
Pearls, says Lisa M. Stockhammer, president of The ThreeGraces.com, an online retailer of antique and vintage jewelry, have an “innate elegance and classicism. They enhance women's beauty. And there is the mysterious, almost magical process that nature exhibits in the making of a pearl.”
“I think that natural pearls are being discovered by Americans who, frankly, had been mesmerized by cultured pearls for decades, but are now upgrading to natural pearls for something different and unique,” says Donald Stone, co-owner of Pierre Famille in Aspen, Colorado.
“Certainly, the word has gotten out that the market is very hot for natural pearls and I’m seeing a lot more strands or even pieces of jewelry than I have in the past several years,” says Gary H. Schuler, senior vice president, director, Sotheby’s jewelry department. “It’s really picked up.”
A Lustrous Pedigree
“All the famous jewelers of Place Vendôme, like Cartier, Chaumet, Van Cleef & Arpels, have traditionally used natural pearls,” points out Thomas Färber, The Faerber Collection of antique jewelry. “There are many famous stories about natural pearls, i.e., Cleopatra dissolved her finest pearl in vinegar to impress Marc Antony by offering the most expensive meal ever to be served.”
“Pearls were treasured by kings in Europe, noble families in America, the Maharajahs of India and the Sheikhs of the Middle East,” states Rahul Kadakia, head of jewelry for Christie’s North and South America. “They’ve always had a royal following.”
Their fascinating provenance, says Schuler, “plays a tremendous part in value. In terms of the items bringing the great prices at auctions these days, it’s as much about who owned them and who made them as the raw materials involved.”
A distinguished pedigree has certainly paid off. Kadakia recalls the November 16, 1999, Christie’s auction in Geneva, where a world record at the time was set by the sale of Barbara Hutton’s pearl necklace, which previously belonged to Empress Marie Antoinette. “It made $1.5 million, which was a huge price.” A few years later, a double-strand necklace sold in Christie’s Geneva for $3.1 million. Topping that price was the sale in Geneva on November 16, 2006, of the Gulf Pearl Parure by Harry Winston, “which had a lot of important pearl drops and had a lot of D flawless diamonds as well,” recalls Kadakia. “It made $4.1 million.”
Then came the Baroda Pearls in 2007 in New York, two strands of what had been a seven-strand necklace once belonging to the Maharajah of Baroda. “I took them for $6 million and people thought I had gone mad. But I believed in them. In the end, a customer in Asia purchased them for $7.1 million, a record I doubt will be surpassed for a long, long time. It was the pinnacle of pearl prices.”
Sotheby’s has also seen significant natural pearl sales, points out Schuler. “In December of 2007, a strand of pearls formerly from the collection of the Duchess of Windsor was sold on behalf of Calvin and Kelly Klein, who had bought the items in our original auction. They were estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million and ultimately sold for $3,625,000. This past December 2009, as part of the collection of Lucia Moreira Salles — a Brazilian model for Chanel in the late fifties, early sixties — a single pearl ring in a deep rose color with a little violet overtone to it, estimated at $30,000 to $50,000, brought over $200,000.”
The 4Ps
While diamonds have the 4Cs to distinguish the best stones, pearls have four points of quality as well: luster, shape, color and size.
Size and shape are currently the most important factors in the realizing of spectacular prices for pearls, explains Alex Vock, president of ProVockative Gems, specializing in natural pearl necklaces and important natural pearl objects. Next is “how smooth is the skin and how good is the luster.”
A “very lightly cream-colored base with pink overtones,” Kadakia says, is the “D flawless of pearls.” And just as there are fancy diamonds, notes Färber, natural fancy colors of pearls are becoming increasingly popular. According to Vock, “there’s a lot of interest in pearls in multicolored hues of greens and browns and fancy earth tones, as well as very purple-gray or very blue-gray colors.”
As with diamonds, certification of natural pearls is critical to establishing value. “Any strand that is coming up now for auction or being traded in the marketplace comes with a gemological report from one of the main laboratories,” says Schuler. “It is also important to certify if it’s a natural freshwater or natural saltwater pearl.” While there is a demand for both, he says, “certainly the market covets the saltwater pearls more than freshwater.”
Availability… and Salability
“You’re dealing with a product whose original source is nearly depleted,” states Vock.
“The industry that formerly existed for pearl fishing is no longer intact in the Persian Gulf. Oil production has affected the access to mollusks and the risk involved in diving for them. Most of the sourcing of natural pearls is from the second-hand market and estate jewelry; 90 percent of the genuine natural saltwater pearls were harvested 90 years ago or more.”
“Natural pearls seem to be very in fashion,” notes Stone, “ especially when shown in concert with diamonds.” Stone stocks “basically neck and face things — earrings and long chains in diamonds and pearls, almost always in platinum, rarely in yellow gold.”
“We try our best to have natural pearls on hand, particularly a strand or two,” says Stockhammer, although she admits it’s sometimes difficult to obtain them. “But we do always stock jewelry with accent natural pearls from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”
Färber agrees that pearl necklaces are the most in demand at present and also “increasingly difficult to find.” But with natural pearl dealer Gourdji Perles Fines joining the Faerber Collection companies, he says he is able to stock a wide range from the smallest seed pearls to large single pearls.
It’s always difficult to come across great natural pearls,” says Schuler. “If they’re fine, they’re rare and that’s why people are willing to pay the price for them. When they come along, they’re highly sought after.”
Today, points out Kadakia, every great jewelry collection needs to have a beautiful strand of natural pearls. But the great examples, like the Baroda or Marie Antoinette’s pearls, “come up for auction once or possibly twice in a lifetime. And you pay what you have to pay to buy them, because you will not find easily another one like them.”
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - October 2010. To subscribe click here.