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Cultured Pearl Market Update

Ombré strands of Tahitian, white South Sea and golden South Sea cultured pearls

Features Yen’s GIA Gems & Gemology · May 2023

Ombré strands of Tahitian, white South Sea and golden South Sea cultured pearls

GIA’s spring 2023 pearl market update, with Eric Yen on why mixed and graduated color strands use the whole harvest. GIA pictured our ombré Tahitian and South Sea set.

GIA's 2023 pearl market update explains the supply squeeze across South Sea, Tahitian, akoya and freshwater pearls. Pandemic travel limits kept technicians from nucleating oysters and mussels at the farms, harvests shrank, and demand from Asia kept growing. With pearls taking about two years to grow, GIA expected supply to recover around 2024.

Eric Yen spoke about mixed and graduated color strands: building strands across colors uses the whole harvest, while making only perfectly matched strands creates more waste. GIA pictured our ombré set of round Tahitian, silver and golden South Sea pearls (10–10.4 mm), a style known in Japanese as shikisai, the “colors of four seasons.”

Read on GIA Gems & Gemology (opens in a new tab) Archived copy

Summary by Yen’s Jewelry. The full article is published by GIA Gems & Gemology.

South Sea Pearls White South Sea

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