Pearly Pearls - Very Contemporary Pearls

Pearls  - the birth gem of June - have captured our hearts and souls for thousands of years with their purity, elegance and beauty. Nowadays the modern pearls are being placed in very contemporary designs, as you will see from the pieces featured here.

Most know how traditional pearls are naturally formed when an oyster reacts with a foreign irritant and envelopes itself with layers of a substance (nacre) for protection. Their rarity and demand has led to the advancement of modern pearl cultivation, so we can now enjoy them in an array of exquisite colours and forms.

At Jens Hansen we mostly use three varieties of modern pearls - the mabe pearl, blue paua, and black pearl.

A mabe pearl is a hemispherical shaped pearl grown against the inside of the oyster's shell, rather than within its tissue. Mabes are most popular as rings, earrings or in pendants. They are aesthetically stunning and tend to be priced much lower than round pearls.

The blue paua pearl presents a lustre and iridescence that is magical.  Only one paua in five produces a marketable blue pearl and only one in fifty produces a near perfect pearl with spectacular colours, a mirror finish and a totally smooth surface.

A current favourite in the world of high fashion jewellery is the breathtaking black pearl - a native of the South Pacific, cultivated in the clear unpolluted water of the Cook Islands.  Black pearls derive their lustrous color from the greyish-black nacre of the oyster shell. There are many different shades of black, however colour is usually not a determining factor in their price.

See our website for more pearl designs or feel free to contact us.  We have some beautiful pearls in our studio ready to be made into jewellery, which we can photograph and email to you if you are not in Nelson, or we can order you a specific pearl as requested.