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Palette of Pearls - Colorful Natural Pearls I have Known
April 07, 2025
Hi,

Here are some of the colorful natural pearls I have known and handled.

How can a Mideast jeweler tell the moment a woman walks into his store if she's wearing natural pearls or not?

Find the answer in "Palette of Pearls" stories and photos of special natural pearls.











Quahog Pearl Collection

A friend of mine from the East Coast grew up with parents who processed shell fish and because they found several quahog pearls he used them as marbles. He and his brother would flick them into broken tile holes in the store's floor.

Once when he was visiting his brother in Cedar Rapids he decided to stop by Muscatine, Iowa, where I live and show me his quahog pearl collection. Fortunately, he didn't loose them playing marbles.

We met at the local Culver's restaurant and spent a delightful time looking and photographing his amazing collection. The polished shell in the photo is mine. I bought it in a shell shop in Florida. I have tried to polish Little Neck clam shells to no avail. They are super, super hard.

I was so pleased with the photos I took at Culvers because the lighting was just perfect and the table surface just right, that I returned several times to Culvers after that and took photos of pearls while sipping on milk shakes.











Hollow Headless Bird Clam Pearl

Early on in my transition to focusing exclusively on natural pearls, I was sent this hollow clam pearl. It was the largest pearl I had seen at the time. It was before the recent flood of giant clam pearls which are so prevalent today.

This hollow pearl looked to me every bit like a headless bird. When I suggested to the owner that it would made a lovely perfume bottle with a sterling silver or golden bird head as a stopper, he promptly wanted it returned to him.

Maybe I gave him an idea. I hope he followed through and made the unique Object d art.











Pen Pearls

I've always been attracted to black natural pearls. To me they are so mysterious and wonderful. So when I was shown these black pen pearls I loved them right away.

Pen pearls are an interesting phenomenon. These pearls can be either nacreous, like the one in the center, or non-nacreous as the black drops circling it.

The silver grey in the center is also a hollow pearl which naturally brings the carat weight down for such a large pearl. Even though it is hollow it is strong and could easily be used for a jewelry statement piece.

The black drops have significant potential but the handicap to these pearls is that they have natural cracking on them and are soft. I attempted to wire wrap a large brown pen pearl and I scratched it "to death" and pretty much ruined the whole thing.

The challenge with these pearls is now how to use them and enjoy them. Wire cages are an option and I'm sure there are many other ways.











Pinctada Maxima Blisters and Blister Pearl

So what does one do with a 305 carat blister? In all practicality it's a too heavy to wear around one's neck. Maybe perhaps on a Maharaja's crown it could hold it's own. At any rate it is a collector's item. I will point out another deception here. When I purchased this I was told emphatically by the diver that it was found in the shell as a loose pearl. I should have known better, because it's easy to see on the back the polishing of shell where it had been cut off.

The same is true of the middle sized blister. I bought it together with the largest one and was told it was a loose pearl but it also had been cut off from the shell and polished to look as natural as possible.

The smallest one is a "blister pearl". Originally it was attached to the shell and when it arrived to me in the mail, it had fallen off. That shows it was only very lightly attached.

That one is also in the photo of a trio of pearls and more is told about it under that title.











Conch Pearls

I was told early on in my natural pearl adventure that the best way to learn about natural pearls is to handle them, lots of them. This is so true. I love carefully examining each and every conch pearl. Each is unique, just like you and me. Each has a distinct personality. To find a perfectly matched pair is very rare, but my daughter, Anna, said,"If twins are hard to find, there will be sisters!" She's right and she should know because she is one of seven siblings and is a "sister extraordinaire". There are sisters, those pearls that have the same pink shade but different size or shape, or the same flame level, or the same size & shape with color variations.











USA Freshwater Pearls

This group of USA freshwater pearls was sent to me to list on my site and my intention was to try and find a quick buyer for the lot but as I was photographing them I "fell in love" with these pearls. I began to realize how precious and rare this group of pearls is. The large one in a drop shape needs some peeling but as the photo shows it has surface and luster quality.

Natural freshwater pearls are greatly undervalued at this time. To some people the term “freshwater” mistakenly means “cultured”.

In times past, natural freshwater pearls were highly sought as they adorned kings, queens and wealthy and the lucky little girls and wives of pearl fishermen.

Natural USA freshwater pearls will again rise to popularity and value. Rest assured. It will happen and then you can be happy that you were wise enough to acquire some of them while they were very affordable.











USA Lavender Pearls

Look very carefully at this photo in the upper right hand. There's a round lustrous lavender USA freshwater pearl there that is the loveliest natural pearl I have ever seen. I've named it the "Johnnie Pearl" after our youngest son, John.

The "Johnnie Pearl" is overseeing his fellow natural lavender spike and baroque pearls. Lavender is a rare but natural color for USA natural freshwater pearls.

Spike is the most common name for the longer pearls but some folks call them feather or wing pearls and it not hard to see why these name also have stuck because many of the do look like feathers or wings.

This lower group has been studied by GIA lab.











Clarence Pearl

Sometimes a USA freshwater mollusk just outdoes himself as in this case with this extra large blister pearl. I might just have an overly active imagination, as someone on social media suggested, "Only you, Kari, could see this in this pearl," but to me it looks just like a boxing glove.

My father, whose name is Clarence, was a boxer, so I've decided to name it after him. Maybe "Boxing Glove Pearl" would stick better but I like the personal touch by using my dad's name.

My sister has a pair of our dad's boxing gloves and punching bag neatly framed on her wall. I have a pair of his gloves too but they're just tucked away in a trunk.

As a young girl, my father would sometimes tease me with pretending to teach me how to box, "Lead with your left. Lead with your left," he would say as he pranced around me. My dad loved boxing and I loved my dad.











Trio of Pearls - Pink, White & Blue

I love posting this photo on the 4th of July, our USA celebration of independence. Two of the pearls are from the USA and one from the Philippines.

The large abalone is from the western coast of USA and is now wire wrapped in copper with a long copper chain. I love wire wrapped pearls because no drilling is needed. A friend of mine who is an expert wire wrapper did the work for me.

The copper was a test for me to preview with plans to repeat the process in gold, but I liked the copper so we left it. I think copper is an overlooked and under appreciated metal. I learned to appreciate copper while driving through eastern Turkey with my son, Sam. The dirt started looking very green. Even whole hills were green. When we passed a large, smelly factory we stopped and asked what they were smelting there. Copper was the answer.

Another time I grew in appreciation of copper is when visiting the Timna Copper Mines in southern Israel. They are filled with Egyptian hieroglyphs and archaeological evidence shows that King Solomon also mined copper there.

The pink pearl is from Minnesota, my childhood home state. A elderly couple visited me one day and the lady showed me photos of her childhood days clamming with her family on the Crow River. She had kept her pearls in a blue Vaseline jar for all these decades. It was such a delight to see her pearl treasures and her vintage photos.

The white pearl is the blister pearl I have mentioned before. It was only slightly attached, so slightly in fact that when it arrived to me from my friend in the Philippines, it had dislodged from the shell. When it arrived loosened from the shell I realized that its value was much higher than I originally quoted. It was a hard "bullet to bite" but I stuck with my initial price for that incredible natural Pinctada maxima pearl.











Abalone Pearls

I included this photo because it is a new look for my photos. I normally don't use a black background but love how this photo turned out and am thrilled to also have some of my own abalone pearls for sale. Abalone pearls are hauntingly beautiful and are a designer's dream.

I've always been intrigued with the iridescence of abalone. My mother had an abalone shell from Catalina Island, California, in our bathroom and I never tired of looking into it's glorious colors.











Mixed Pearl Group

Have you ever noticed in your life and business that sometimes the best opportunities, best photos, best ideas just happened, unplanned, unprepared, unpremeditated?

This photo is one of those unexpected successes.

I was getting ready to sell the large melo pearl and wanted to photograph it before it left my possession. The melo pearl was a gorgeous color with full flame but I should have seen a red flag right off when it arrived to me in a small jar of hair gel. Sure enough after a few weeks, a crack appeared, which had been masked by the hair gel.

I found a buyer who first carefully examined that crack and declared, "The crack isn't too bad." Then he offered me a very fair price and I was happy to sell it to him.

I added two pink conch pearls that were close at hand and two of my favorite USA natural freshwater pearls. The purple one is my all time most favorite natural pearl off all time. The silver pearl is directly from the Mississippi River near where I live. Then I picked out a large clam pearl I have on hand and a dark purple, almost black quahog pearl also in my stash.











Cassis & Clam Pearls

At a recent gem show in Hong Kong an acquaintance handed me some bags full of clam pearls and cassis pearls to list on my site. He's an avid collector of natural pearls and several years ago a friend of mine and myself spent nine hours, yes, nine hours, looking at his natural pearls.

My daughter, Sarah, took these lovely photos of some of his pearls for me. I bought the clam shell in Walmart. A very unexpected place to find such a gorgeous shell but I was thrilled to find it there.











Basra Pearls

On my tour of the countries around the Persian Gulf I took this photo of Pinctada radiata pearls. You'd think natural pearls would be easy to find and very prevalent in all the Gulf countries but that's not the case. It was a fun treasure hunt.

I walked into one natural pearl store and was surprised to have the store keeper look at me and say, "Oh! I know you! You're Kari! I am just now looking at your website!" We became instant friends at that moment.

Another natural pearl store owner told me something I've thought about so many times. He said, "Kari, I can tell the instant a woman walks through my door if she's wearing natural pearls or not."

"Wow," I said, "how can you tell that? You'd be too far away sometimes to even see the pearls she's wearing."

He answered me with two words, "Her confidence!"


Conclusion

I would love nothing better than for you to have that confidence too!

Thank you for joining me on my natural pearl adventure.

I appreciate you!



God bless and thank you for being a part of KariPearls.


Kari

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