Marte pendant in gold with baroque Tahitian pearl with bronze-green reflections and diamond

How it is made

The words of the trade, one by one, explained to those who do not know them.

01

Tahitian pearl

The pearl is the only gem produced by a living animal. It is not a crystal grown in the rock: it is mother-of-pearl, which the oyster lays down in very thin layers around a nucleus, one on top of another for years, and the light seen at the surface is the sum of those layers. The gray of the Tahitians is theirs from birth: it comes from Pinctada margaritifera, the black-lipped oyster, and it is not a dye. But mother-of-pearl is soft: it scratches with a fingernail, and perfume, hairspray, vinegar and sweat corrode the surface until the luster goes out. It is put away dry, and never shut in a bag where no air passes.

02

Baroque pearl

Baroque means that the pearl is not round, and that it has not been made round: the mother-of-pearl settled around a nucleus that had shifted, and every layer repeated the offset of the one before, until the body grew with its own humps and folds. A round one can be discarded and replaced with another of the same size; a baroque cannot, there is no second one with the same outline. Whoever mounts it is therefore working on a unique piece: the seat has to be fitted by hand to that shape, and forcing it chips the mother-of-pearl, which above the nucleus is a few tenths of a millimeter thick.

03

Brilliant cut

Fifty-seven facets calculated so that light entering from above comes back out the same side. It is the cut that makes a diamond sparkle, and the reason a badly cut diamond stays dull.