Freshwater Pearls

As Coco Chanel said…”a woman needs ropes and ropes of pearls”

We couldn’t agree more!

All of the freshwater pearls on this page are natural pearls that are cultured by pearl farmers in China using mussels kept in lakes and ponds. The mussel, irritated by an intruder in its shell, tries to cover the irritant with secretes of nacre. This is repeated many times, thus producing a pearl. Natural (non farmed) pearls consist of nearly 100%nacre. In cultured pearls, the irritant is typically a cut piece of the mantle.

Freshwater pearls come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and colours (some of the brighter colours that you see on these pages will have been dyed). Freshwater pearls differ from saltwater pearls in that they are grown in lakes by mussels as opposed to being grown by oysters in oceans.

We buy all of our freshwater pearls directly from the Chinese pearl dealer that we have been doing business with for many years and know that our pearls are drilled with a hole of approx 0.6mm which means that a Griffin silk cord in sizes 3-4 is ideal for knotting these pearls.

Our pearls are priced according to their grade e.g. with the lower priced pearls it is normal to expect some lines, inclusions and colour variations. With our higher A Grade and AA Grade pearls you can expect a rounder, smoother finish with less inclusions and a very even colour. Our pearls are sold by the strand which measure approx 15-16 inches in length.

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Showing all 21 results