Akoya studs

These Akoya pearls were harvested in January 2024. The surface of the pearls has a transparency reminiscent of a glass coating. They appear as if they are submerged in water. The core of the pearls has a purplish hue, while the surface resembles an emerald green glass coating. There’s also a slight hint of red visible. The pearls exhibit a much stronger luster than average.

While I’d love to say the surface is perfectly smooth, in reality, there are minor wrinkles and two small dot-like wounds. However, these imperfections are positioned in such a way that they are not visible from the front. The brilliance of these pearls far outweighs these minor flaws, making them hardly noticeable.

There’s also a video introducing these earrings on YouTube, so if you’re interested, please take a look.

 

 

As mentioned earlier, these earrings are made from pearls harvested in January 2024. Of the 600-700 blue pearls I received back from processing just recently (today is September 11, 2024), I selected the best ones. The processing involved removing minute impurities like proteins, which slightly enhanced their luster and deepened their color. From these 600-700 pearls, I handpicked the highest-quality ones, resulting in 20 pairs of earrings. These earrings are one of those pairs.

On YouTube, you can see the pearl selection process, drilling, and pairing in the video. You can check the quality and manufacturing process, so I would be grateful if you could give it a watch.

 

The 20 pairs of earrings are currently available for sale on Etsy, with a letter from A to R assigned to each pair as a reference. These letters were assigned when the pairs were made, and you can see which pair is which in the video.

Now, regarding Akoya pearl farms, the industry has seen a sharp rise in pearl prices in recent years, leading to record-high salaries and bonuses for employees. However, despite the attractive compensation, some workers still leave for various reasons.

Japan continues to face a severe labor shortage across many industries, and pearl farming is no exception. Over the past few years, the farms have increasingly relied on Indonesian workers. Thanks to their contributions, the previously dire labor shortage in pearl farming has started to improve, offering some hope for the future.

While pearls are high-value items, the working conditions at pearl farms are tough. Employees work outside, caring for the Akoya oysters year-round, in both summer and winter. The boxes containing the oysters and the nets hung in the sea weigh over 4 kilograms each. Workers pull hundreds of these boxes and nets from the sea and return them every day. I myself worked at a farm for a month as part of my training, and after a day of pulling oysters out of the nets, three of my fingernails on my right hand peeled off. There were even days when I fell asleep the moment I opened a beer at home. It’s incredibly demanding physical labor until you get used to it.

Most farm employees don’t get to see the pearls very often, as they mainly take care of the oysters. When it’s time to harvest the pearls, the oysters are opened, and their adductor muscle is separated from the rest of the meat. The adductor muscle is then sold as a product, while the remaining meat is collected and placed into a centrifuge, which separates the pearls from the meat. The pearls are then sent to the office, where a select group of employees sorts them. In other words, many farm employees only see the flesh containing the pearls, and don’t often get to see the pearls themselves.

However, employees who perform the nucleation process, where they implant the nucleus into the oysters, do inspect the pearls they implanted as part of their training. They review pearls they nucleated a year or two prior and use that as a reference for their future work. I find this long span of time astonishing—waiting one to two years for results requires a lot of patience.

 

For instance, these pearl earrings likely come from oysters nucleated in the summer of 2022. It takes about two years for the oysters to reach a state where they can undergo nucleation. It truly takes a long time for one pearl to be formed. Over the two-year cultivation period, it’s said that around 2,000 layers of nacre form on the pearl. Imagining how the oyster slowly secretes layer upon layer of nacre in the sea may give you a new appreciation for pearls.

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