Chinese History
by Richard W. Wise © 2009
10mm Freshwater pearls, from the R. W. Wise, Goldsmiths Collection. Photo: Jeff Scovil
Its been a long, long road. The first known account of pearl culturing in China dates to 1086 (Donkin 1998). In modern times, China has been producing commercial quantities of freshwater pearls since the 1970s.
From the early 70s the best of the small production coming from a small number of Chinese farms were sold to the Japanese. The pearls were almost impossible to tell from the expensive Lake Biwa production and once they reached Tokyo, they were miraculously converted to Japanese pearls and sold as such. By 1978, fully 60% of Japanese “Biwa” exports consisted of pearls made in China (Strack 2006).
By the mid-80s a few Chinese freshwater pearls leaked out of the pipeline. I recall buying from one dealer in Tucson, small 5-7mm single button and egg shaped pastel colored pearls with the metallic luster for which they have since become famous. By the late 80s pioneers like Fuji Voll of Pacific Pearls was bringing in 7-9mm high luster, smooth buttons which could be easily matched and sold at very big markups. The problem of dealers is that more kept coming, they kept getting bigger and better and prices kept falling.
Then in the late 80s culminating in 1994 large numbers of round 9-14mm suddenly appeared in the U. S. market. Prices were all over the place. I saw some exceptional 9-10mm almost rounds for a couple of thousand dollars as well as similar stands for over $4,000. James Peach showed some amazing singles up to 14mm and exhibited one strand of completely round metallic natural color pastel pearls with an asking price of $85,000. Suddenly everyone became a pearl dealer. Then poof, these high quality round pearls were gone.
The high quality rounds disappeared and left many a newly minted pearl dealer high and dry. What happened. I have heard several stories. According to Strack, more farms were added in 1994 which led to falling prices in 1995, so farmers simply left their shells in the water unharvested for two years resulting in a spike of high quality large rounds. Another story told to me by a dealer: it takes two years to produce a 10mm+ nucleated South sea pearl and five years to produce a non-nucleated 10mm+ Chinese round and the Chinese figured they couldn’t compete. Whatever the reason, high quality rounds disappeared and all that was left at the high end were off-rounds the market dubbed “potatoes.”
Bigger Rounds Are Back:
- Freshwater pearls from China with metallic luster. Photo courtesy: Pearl Paradise
A couple of weeks ago, Jeremy Shepherd of Pearl Paradise sent me two strands of 9-9.5 mm Chinese metallic multicolor and these pearls were truly eight way rollers.
The beads were round, the skin smooth and the luster metallic. These are qualities reminiscent of the mid-90s. According to Shepherd there are indeed larger sizes in production but quality drops off rapidly above 10mm and prices begin to increase geometrically for finer pearls above that size.
Total Chinese pearl production peaked in 2007 at 1,600 tons and have been declining every year since. Production in 2010 is estimated at 1,000 tons approximately the same level as 2004. Seems like the Chinese are working towards higher quality. Continue reading