A little while ago, I promised you a small “primer” on THE newest, hottest pearls in the industry: Edison Pearls. 

“Edison Pearls” are the latest in a LONG line of Freshwater pearl experiments are aimed taking on the legendary White and Golden South Sea pearls from Australia.

These pearls are produced by a few radical pearl farms in China, and have only been available for 2-3 years now on the markets. 

Traditionally Freshwater pearls have always been what we call "tissue-nucleated". This forms a solid-nacre pearl, but the pearls have always been characterized by their Off-Round to Oval and Potato shapes which many in the industry found to be ... not ideal. 

Saltwater pearls (Akoya, South Sea and Tahitians) are nucleated with a perfectly round bead nucleus, which gives the oyster a "template" to form nacre around. This eventually leads to a perfectly round pearl (hopefully!). Pearls that are perfectly round and symmetrical are pretty much The Gold Standard in the pearl industry. 

So the farms began experimenting with bead nucleating their Freshwater pearl mussels in an attempt to produce perfectly round, large pearls.

And WOW have those efforts produced some AMAZING pearls!!

The average size of an Edison pearl ranges between 11.0-16.0mm (!!!!). They're able to attain these sizes, because like South Sea oysters, the Freshwater mussel is nucleated with only ONE bead at a time. This allows the mussel to direct all its attention at creating a single amazing pearl with South Sea pearl sizes ...

Violet, magenta, bright flashes of Blue shimmer over every bit of surface area on each pearl …Known for their intense, metallic Luster and unique Orient, the Edison pearl variety has one thing that its "Ripple" pearl predecessor doesn't: Mostly Smooth Surfaces.

The Drop and Baroque shaped Edison strands I was able to pick up do display a variety in surface texture - some of these are very like the Kasumi-style Ripple pearls I had on the site in September, and some are Super Smooth ... 

Debuting at the Hong Kong Jewelry Shows in 2014, the initial harvests were priced at sky high premiums, especially the perfect round pearls - well into the high thousands.

But! 

I was able to get my hands on an exclusive, limited lot of White Edison baroque strands for Pure recently. 

These are truly Collector's Level pearls! In addition to their incredibly intense Orient, Edison pearls feature INCREDIBLE South Sea-sizes ranging from 14.0-15.0mm per strand! 

A White South Sea Necklace of this size and caliber would easily cost in the $5,000 range.

I’m creating these gorgeous pearls in two necklace lengths: 18-Inches to a stunning 36-Inch Opera Length! 

Imagine 36-Inches of these pearls wrapped around your neck! I haven’t been able to stop playing with them since I got them in!

Until then: Long Live Color!