gems, pearls, American freshwater pearls

This introductory account reviews the historical importance, commercial decline, continuing production, and relative value of American natural freshwater pearls. Once widely sought, including by European royalty, these pearls had become unfamiliar to many jewellers by the late twentieth century, with a small output largely selected by specialist dealers and connoisseurs. Their rarity is illustrated by nineteenth-century statistics suggesting that approximately 1,000–1,200 bivalves had to be opened to obtain one attractive, marketable pearl. Most pearls were baroque, with pear-shaped examples uncommon and round examples particularly rare. Much of the historical supply was recovered incidentally during harvesting of American river mussels for the mother-of-pearl button industry. The author attributes the subsequent collapse of the trade to several interacting developments: plastics displaced shell in button manufacture, inexpensive and predominantly round Japanese cultured pearls became commercially abundant, and the Great Depression sharply reduced demand for luxury goods. Demand for American shells later revived because Japanese pearl growers valued them as material for cultured-pearl bead nuclei, bringing renewed incidental discoveries of natural pearls. Production nevertheless remained below earlier levels, especially for large specimens, and much of the larger material illustrated came from stocks collected decades previously. The scarcity of large pearls is related to their long development within long-lived mussels, with some pearls said to require twenty or thirty years to form. Pollution and overharvesting are identified as additional pressures that reduced the availability of older, larger shellfish. To place contemporary prices in historical perspective, the article compares nineteenth-century pearl transactions with workers’ weekly earnings. An American pearl weighing 25 carats, bought by Tiffany in 1857 for US$1,500, is presented as equivalent to approximately 300 weeks of a worker’s wages at that time. A second example, weighing 100 carats and valued at US$25,000, illustrates the exceptional historical valuation of very large natural pearls. Rogers argues that attractive examples, particularly imaginative baroque forms resembling wings, birds, or fish, remained comparatively affordable in 1988. He anticipates that greater public recognition and demand could increase prices and recommends books by Alexander Farn and Jean Taburiaux for further study.