Keshi Pearl and Amethyst Tiara

 

I was fascinated by Keshi pearls when I stumbled across them while on Ebay one night.  I had been scouring the listings for good quality pearls, when I noticed a listing for Keshi petal pearls. Upon looking closer, I discovered that these pearls did indeed look like petals and completely unlike any other pearl I had seen.

A quick Buy It Now purchase and a short waiting time later, I had a string of beautiful cream Keshi pearls.  The lustre was stunning and I was incredibly excited to create something with them, so I designed the Keshi Pearl Delight Tiara and the Keshi Pearl Flower Comb.

Keen to find out more about Keshi pearls, I did some digging around on the internet and found that Keshi is Japanese for Poppy Seed.  Normal pearls occur when a foreign object (a grain of sand for example) is embedded inside a mollusc. The grain of sand becomes the nucleus around which the mollusc forms layer upon layer of nacre to protect itself. Eventually a pearl is formed and the pearl farmers are happy.

A Keshi pearl is formed when the mollusc rejects the nucleus before the pearl has become fully formed.  It continues to form the protective nacre, but instead of forming a full pearl, the Keshi pearl is made entirely of nacre.  This makes the pearl harder and more lustrous than other pearls.

Nowadays, pearl farmers monitor the pearls and normally flush out the ones with no nucleus, to allow a new nucleaus to be inserted.  This means that Keshi pearls are fairly rare and are generally more sought after and cherished, which explains the astronomical price for them on Ebay.

Getting back to the Keshi Pearl and Amethyst Tiara…

I bought the lavender Keshi pearls from the same dealer on Ebay and purchased some Amethyst briolettes.

I wanted to create a headpiece which could be worn in the Spring or Summer, and which had a whimsical floral theme.  The Amethyst briolettes complemented the lavender lustre of the petal pearls, so I created three flowers using the Keshi petals on the outside and the smaller Amethyst briolettes on the inside.  A clear round Swarovski crystal in the centre completed each flower.

I liked the idea of having the flowers offset, rather than one in the middle and two on either side, so I hand formed some silver wire above and below the flowers, to create a fluid and freeform tiara.  To me, it evokes the 1920s flapper girls, but it also has a natural charm (being 50% made from natural sources), which would be perfect with flowing curly locks at a beach wedding.