NATURAL BLACK PEARLS FROM THE COOK ISLANDS

Natural Black Pearls…so beautiful… The spectacular gift of nature from the pristine Northern lagoons of the Cook Islands hidden deep in the South Pacific. Famed for centuries as a natural treasure and prized jewellry possession of distinguished High Chiefs, Nobles and Aristocaratic Royalty- but now available to you at your price. An heirloom of special worth. Turn heads and receive envious comments on your remarkable individual style.

DIRECT CONTACT

Shona has direct local contacts with local pearl farmers in the remote northern islands of Manihiki and Rakahanga. They visit and supply her in Rarotonga.

She speaks their dialects and is loved by them as family.

AMAZING VALUE

So she can offer you great value prices on pearls without any overheads or huge retail mark-ups- without tarnishing the real value of your purchase. Only those who have no good local contacts like Shona need to shop in the pearl stores in Avarua.

WE COME TO YOU- TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

Ask Shona to visit you and show you her loose pearls and those that she has had crafted locally into unique settings.

She can also share how to wear and preserve the pearl for best effect.

If you are really unsure of which pearl to buy then Shona may offer to let you wear it to dinner or a show.

A natural black pearl…the treasure of a lifetime!

The following information is from the Island Craft webpage which Shona uses to do her pearl jewellry settings.

Creation of a Cultured Pearl:
In the remote Northern Cook Islands atolls of Manihiki and Penrhyn, a remarkable collusion of science and nature begins, the Black Lipped Oyster (Pinctada Margaritifera) are coaxed into producing the rare Black Cultured Pearl. With surgical precision, a technician or grafter uses a scalpel to make a small incision into the oyster's gonad. A snippet of donor mantle tissue is inserted, followed by a nucleus, a bead carved from the shell of an American freshwater mussel. The mantle tissue then forms a living sac around the nucleus where nacre, the substance that a pearl is made of, is secreated and deposited over the nucleus. As the Pinctada Margaritifera is sensitive to variations to water temperature, it will only flourish in certain lagoons, limiting the number of pearls produced. Like all South Seas pearls, Cook Islands South Seas Black Pearls require two years to develop their heavy coating of lustrous nacre that is 1.5-3mm in thickness.

For centuries, pearls have been valued by people of all cultures and have come to symbolize love, good fortune and prosperity. Today the legendary islands of the South Seas produce the most famous and sought after black pearls in the world...