PEARLS POPULAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 March 1939, Page 8

PEARLS POPULAR

FASHIONS MOST SOUGHT-AFTER GEM. Pearls are popular, and the vogue is bringing back prosperity to the pearl fishers of the Persian Gulf. News ha? reached London that hundreds of these men are leaving the oilfields, where they were forced to seek work in the years of slump, and are returning to their old romantic jobs (states the “Daily Telegraph”). Smart women in Europe and America are buying more jewellery, and pearls have become fashion’s most sought-after gem. The pearl divers of Bahrein and Davai Islands are trained from early childhood to go down as many as 20 times in one afternoon. Despite the dangers of their calling, they prefei it to the work in the oilfields. The most valuable pearls generally lie just inside the mouth of the shell, so the expert learns to open the shell without damaging its precious contents. . , After the shells have been washed out the raw pearls are bundled up in little squares of cloth, ready to be sent to the Moti (“Pearl”) Market in Bombay. There they are cleaned and sorted into grades before being marketed, drilled, and forwarded to the world’s jewellers. Drilling pearls is an age-old craft. Though machines are used for pearl drilling in Europe and America, they never achieve the same perfection as the native craftsman. Much depends upon the skill of the driller; the larger the hole the greater the loss in weight and value. The pearls are graduated according to colour. A “bunch” consists of a number of short strings of pearls, each string carrying gems of equal size. The whole bunch is tied together with a strong silk cord. The bunches are graded, according to colours of the pearls, white, cream, rose, or tinted. Button pearls, which are used for rings, tie-pins, ear-rings, and in .mounted jewellery, are pierced at one side only and are made up into packets. Some of the world's most valuable pearls are not pearly in colour at all. They are greeny-black.