It took gem-oddities specialist Lowell Jones five years to accumulate the greatest modern-day collection of fine abalone pearls—and just five seconds to lose the 3,000-piece assemblage, worth $3 million, to thieves in New York early in 1988.
Soon afterward, Jones returned to the few remaining American continent pearl-retrieval areas, mainly ones along the coast of Southern California and the shores of Mexico’s Baha Peninsula, trying to duplicate his feat. But after a year, Jones was ready to call it quits.
Who could blame him? During a trip to Mexico in February and March of 1989, he found a meager 140 pearls in 20 days, all of which he bought, though only about 30 were laudable. In previous trips south of the border, Jones was able to ferret out hundreds of fine pearls in considerably shorter stays.
Yet he stuck with his specialty. And that was good news for the many abalone pearl connoisseurs who owe their ardor for this organic gem to Jones and his rather flamboyant style of market-making. Not above using P.T. Barnum tactics to catch the public’s eye, Jones prides himself on having garnered recent mentions for mammoth abalone pearls in the “Guinness Book of World Records” and “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” If such tactics strike you as gauche, you may be consoled with the fact that they have helped to drive prices for praiseworthy abalone pearls to amazing heights.
Rarer Than Ever
Although abalones are a fairly plentiful mollusk, these rock-hugging snails usually found in mild-temperature ocean waters rarely produce pearls. When they do, the cause is usually an inner shell or intestinal disturbance—anything from a tiny shell fragment or pebble to a parasite or small crab—that requires encasement in nacre. Over time this protective secretion hardens into a pearl, which sometimes has a hollow center because the original intruding substance has disintegrated.
Like the magnificently iridescent shells in which they’re found, abalone pearls boast brilliant color play that makes them unique among this gem species. Indeed, one reason pearl connoisseurs have long made so much fuss over choice abalone pearls is the gems’ near opal-like swirls of rainbow colors.
But don’t expect this kaleidoscopic array of color on every abalone pearl. Most often you’ll have to settle for a pearl with a basic hue and some subtle secondary tints. The basic hue is determined by the predominant shell color associated with the species of abalone from which the pearl comes. Off California and Mexico alone there are at least six different abalone types, classified by shell color, ranging from pink and red to green and black—not to mention other varieties off Japan, Korea, Thailand and South Africa.
Today, the rocky shores of California and Mexico are the main source of abalone pearls, as they have been for a long time. Even when the world could count on other waters for a significant portion of this marine-life byproduct, it may very well have been those from the Pacific coast of North America that were most prized. In support of this theory, we note that when the Spaniards looted Mexico’s Aztec Empire of its enormous gold, silver and gem wealth (including abalone pearls) in the early 16th century, this variety of pearl came into vogue in India, one of Spain’s trading partners. The mega-moneyed maharajahs who bought these pearls collected gems as if it were a matter of noblesse oblige.
Somewhere in one of those maharajah’s gem collections still intact there may even repose the kind of abalone pearl the great gemologist George F. Kunz (1856-1932) had in mind when he told oceanographer La Place Bostwick that a perfect specimen of this species is “among the most rare, the most beautiful and most valuable of gems.”
If by “perfect” Kunz meant a round and profoundly opalescent abalone pearl, he would have been describing something verging on the mythical—at least in modern times. No pearl expert we talked to with knowledge of abalone pearls has ever seen a completely spherical specimen, although Jones owns a 17mm semi-round. Most often abalone pearls are baroque, often shaped like teeth or cones or, far less frequently, buttons.
Farm-Fresh Pearls
Given the high esteem in which men like Kunz, for decades the chief gem buyer at Tiffany & Co., held abalone pearl, it is hardly surprising to hear that from the earliest days of pearl culturing on there have been periodic attempts to force abalones to grow these lovelies. In 1898, Louis Bouton lured the Paris Academie des Sciences on a successful abalone pearl-culturing experiment that he had conducted the previous year. Here, briefly, is how it worked:
After boring holes in the shells of these snails, Bouton inserted tiny mother-of-pearl pellets in the mantle tissue, then sealed the holes. Six months later, he discovered that the abalones had covered the pellets with enough nacre to have created small but true pearl spheres whose beauty rivaled the natural variety. If left to grow for longer periods, Bouton theorized, magnificent large pearls would result.
Now, some 90 years later, it is sometimes suspected that the Japanese are trying to prove Bouton right. Indeed, according to Tennessee pearl dealer and farmer John Latendresse, Bouton’s theories have already become reality. “The Japanese have grown and harvested cultured abalone pearls,” he insists. Where? At farms whose locations remain top secret. However, not-so-secret abalone pearl-culturing operations have recently been launched in South Korea, Hawaii and along the Pacific Coast of North America.
In any case, cultured abalone pearls would probably be widely welcomed in the jewelry world, especially among custom jewelers who specialize in one-of-a-kind designs. From a standpoint of color, this pearl has little or no competition. It is an asset which more than compensates for the species’ lack of round shapes.
Without culturing, abalone pearl, like every other variety of natural pearl, faces a grim future. Since the early 1980s, prices for these pearls have skyrocketed as scarcities have intensified. Quoted at $500 to $1,000 for exceptionally large specimens in John Sinkankas’ “Gemstones of North America” (1976), items of the same quality today can easily fetch thousands of dollars. Latendresse is currently selling a better to fine pieces between 15 and 30 carats for $300 to $500 per carat—or $4,500 to $15,000 total price. If such sums scare you, we’ll refrain from repeating the far, far higher figures we’re hearing for truly outstanding pieces through the pearl world grapevine.
Please note: this profile was originally published in 1992 in Modern Jeweler’s ‘Gem Profiles/2: The Second 60’, written by David Federman with photographs by Tino Hammid.
The abalone pearl shown in the header image is courtesy of Lowell Jones, Palm Springs, Calif.
