Open-drop sterling silver dangle earrings with freshwater pearl

The body of the earring is a long, hollow drop. A wide silver ribbon starts at the top, runs down, turns at the bottom and comes back up: on the turn it is hollowed like a spoon, and the hollow is darkened almost to black while the edge that bounds it has been polished to a mirror. Over the same path runs a second, thinner ribbon, drawing a second drop inside the first and leaving a narrow void between the two. Inside the hollow, resting where the turn is widest, sits the white pearl: the black behind it is not an accident, it is what holds its sheen — on a polished ground the pearl would have blurred into the silver. At the top the ribbon narrows and becomes the leverback hook, tapering to a point and passing behind the lobe.

Six centimeters tall counting the hook, and twelve grams fifty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths: the company states that weight once only, without saying whether it is for one earring or for the pair, and we do not decide that in their place. The pearl measures twelve millimeters by nine and a half: the company calls it round, but those two numbers say it is slightly flattened, and you can see it in the photographs. Whether it is cultured or natural is written nowhere, and we do not write it in their place. One thing does hold for every pearl: they are calcium carbonate held together by an organic substance, they sit around the third degree of hardness and they dissolve in acids, so they go on after the perfume and come off first. On these earrings there is a second reason to do so: the darkened silver behind the pearl is what makes the piece, and a cloth rubbed too hard in there takes it away.