Choosing your pearl earrings is slightly easier than shopping for pearl strands meant for necklaces and bracelets. This is because pearl earrings can exist with as little as a couple of pearl pieces. Not only is it easier to control the quality of your pearls—it also makes shopping for natural, pricier pearls possible.

Natural pearls

Natural pearls are pearls which have been formed without the intervention of human hands. They are very rare, and needless to say, the most expensive in the market. When shopping for pearl earrings that are natural, examine the pearl pieces’ luster, size, shape, and type. The black pearls from the South Sea are still the most expensive natural pearls because they are rare and exude luster and shine that can’t be matched by other types of pearls. Like in cultured or man-manipulated/farmed pearls, the closer the pearl’s shape is to a perfect sphere, the more valuable it is. Natural pearls would feel gritty when tested or rubbed against your front tooth.

Cultured pearls

Cultured pearls are slightly more affordable than natural pearls. Most of them, like the Akoya cultured pearls of Japan and China, come very close to the luster and shape of natural deep sea water pearls. They’re only cheaper because they’re more abundant and are easier to produce.

When you examine cultured pearls through an x-ray, they would lack the ringlets of calcium which are present in natural pearls. This is because the formation of cultured pearls has been artificially initiated by man by inserting a piece of bead into the farm oysters. The result is a smoother pearl with lower levels of calcium. When harvested, they more or less have more regular sizes and shapes.

Cultured pearls will feel smoother when rubbed against your front tooth. They should, however, not be mistaken for synthetic pearls which are only painted-over glass or plastic beads. You must always have a “knife test” when purchasing pearls. Real pearls, whether cultured or natural, will only disintegrate into powder when scraped. Paint will peel off a synthetic pearl under a knife’s edge.

The article is contributed by a professional content writer, having experiences of working in different industries. For further information on cultured pearl earrings and pearl earrings please visit http://www.alohapearls.com/

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/jewelry-articles/selecting-pearl-earrings-792690.html

Celebrated for his Art Nouveau stained-glass interpretations of birds, insects, fruits and flowers, Louis Comfort Tiffany was the foremost American designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His enormous influence on his father’s famed company, however, has been largely obscured. In this illustrated volume, Tiffany & Co design director John Loring puts into perspective the mutually beneficial bonds between “LCT” and the family firm. The book includes 350 colour images of the jewellery, enamels, blown glass, ceramics, desk accessories and other objets d’art created by LCT during his 16-year tenure as the company’s design director, as well as luxury goods produced in his own studios - but in fact financed and retailed by the family company.

About the Author
John Loring is the design director of Tiffany & Co., the internationally renowned jeweler and purveyor of luxury goods. He writes on art and design and is the author of Abrams’ Tiffany Jewels, Tiffany’s 20th Century, Magnificent Tiffany Silver, and nine other books on Tiffany style and entertaining. He lives in New York City.

Hattie Carnegie’s life story surpasses that of Cinderella in that it is true. Born in 1886, she went from being a destitute Macy’s messenger girl who owned three blouses and one skirt to controlling, at its high point, a ten-million-dollar empire. Her five companies included custom and ready-to-wear clothing, hats, perfume, and fabulous costume jewelry. For decades, her personal taste and fashion sense influenced the styles worn by countless American women. Today, Hattie Carnegie’s jewelry is what has lasted, and this groundbreaking book showcases the full range of designs — from glamorous rhinestone bracelets to exotic Oriental pins. Over 480 stunning color photos illustrate earrings, necklaces, sets, pins, and bracelets produced from the 1920s to the 1970s. Historical background, jewelry marks and signatures, current values, and collector tips are all included. Many have heard the name Hattie Carnegie, but until now her story has remained a silent secret. With this engaging book, collectors can finally enjoy a look at Hattie Carnegie’s fascinating life as well as the beautiful jewelry that serves as her legacy.

This latest attempt to interpret Chanel’s revolutionary fashion aesthetic focuses on her jewelry designs, which often owed much to Byzantine, Renaissance, and Baroque forms. Mauries’s spare essay omits much of the conjecture that plagues other books about the designer (Claude Baillen’s Chanel Solitaire , LJ 1/15/75; Edmonde Charles-Roux’s Chanel: Her Life, Her World , LJ 10/15/75) but offers facts and quotations that will be familiar to Chanel fans. Charming contemporary sketches and striking photographs are the core of the book. They allow readers to compare Chanel’s jewelry adaptations with their historic originals and to observe how the colorful fantasy pieces decorated otherwise drab Chanel fashions. Inclusive costume history collections might wish to add this volume, but Jean Leymarie’s massive Chanel ( LJ 3/1/88) is the better buy.
- Therese Duzinkiewicz Baker, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
“When you make imitation jewelry, you always make it bigger.” So confided Chanel, the doyenne of costume baubles who brought forth the concept of designer jewelry. Sifting through past creations, she cleverly incorporated just the right touch of “Chanelisme” to call them her own. As early as 1911, awed by the unrestrained jewelry designs of the fashion illustrator and designer Paul Iribe, Chanel absorbed his talent to juxtapose combinations of stones, textures, and settings only to unveil her “variations” in the 1930s–a full 20 years later. At a time when a surrealist contemporary mode followed eighteenth-century fantasy-world ideas, Chanel found inspiration in the dreamlike, theatrical trend of fantasy imagery, especially through the art of close friends Cocteau, Dali, and Picasso, who all offered unbounded creative twists to her trinkets. However, Chanel’s greatest jewelry heist was the bulky settings common to ancient Byzantine jewelry; such pieces not only echoed her stand that imitation jewelry should be “bigger” but were also regarded with personal affection by her throughout her life. From Chanel’s first jewelry show, which focused on astral diamond cascades, to the Byzantine reflections, this book reveals how Chanel’s jewelry took relatively excessive and indiscreet proportions with deliberately irregular settings and soldered them into a sophisticated freedom and flexibility that is the epitome of Chanel style. Janet Lawrence –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.