The standard, published in full.
This is the entire scale we grade against. It is adapted from the seven value factors the Gemological Institute of America uses, with a nacre floor of our own on top. Nothing here is proprietary and you are welcome to hold us to it.
Nothing about the pearl changes except how sharply it returns the light. That is the entire difference between a strand at two thousand dollars and one at nine, and it is the one thing a photograph cannot carry — which is why we would rather you came in.
Try it yourself, right here.
Nothing about the pearl above changes as you move the slider except how sharply it returns the light. That is the whole of what lustre is, and it is most of what you pay for.
At the top of the scale you can read the shape of the window in the surface — the reflection has a border. At the bottom it is a bright patch with no edge anywhere. Every pearl you will ever be shown sits somewhere on that line, and you can place it in four seconds with no equipment at all.
Why there are no A's on this website
AAA, AAAA and AAAAA are retail inventions. No laboratory issues them, no trade body defines them, and every seller sets their own. A pearl can be honestly labelled AAA by one shop and AA by the shop next door, and the two pearls can be identical.
The grades below are descriptive instead. "Excellent lustre" means a reflected light source has a hard edge in the surface of the pearl. You can check that yourself, in a shop window, in about four seconds, on any pearl anywhere. That is the point of writing it that way.
What gets measured, and how.
Lustre
Excellent · Very good · Good · Fair · Poor
The most valuable thing about a pearl and the hardest to photograph. Hold it under a window and look at the reflection of the window frame in the surface. On an excellent pearl the reflection has a defined edge — you can see where the frame stops. On a fair one it spreads out and fades into a bright patch. That difference is most of the price.
Surface
Clean · Lightly spotted · Moderately spotted · Heavily spotted
Pearls are grown by an animal, and the surface records that. Pinpricks, small bumps, faint ridges and shallow pits are all normal. We give a percentage of clean surface alongside the category, because "lightly spotted" covers a wide range and the number does not.
Nacre thickness
Measured in millimetres, per pearl
Most cultured pearls are a shell bead with a coat of nacre over it. The coat is what you are buying — it is what produces lustre and it is what wears through. We measure it and publish the number. Our floors: 0.4mm for akoya, 1.2mm for Tahitian, 2.0mm for South Sea. Keshi have no bead at all and are solid nacre throughout.
Shape
Round · Near-round · Oval · Button · Drop · Semi-baroque · Baroque · Circled
Round is rarest and priced accordingly, but it is not automatically better. A well-matched drop pair is harder to assemble than a round one, and a good baroque is a sculpture. We state the shape and the out-of-round percentage and leave the preference to you.
Colour
Body colour, overtone, and orient — reported separately
Three things get muddled into one word. Body colour is the base — white, cream, grey, gold, black. Overtone is a translucent second colour floating over it, like rosé or green or aubergine. Orient is the faint rainbow shimmer under the surface, and only appears on thick nacre. We report all three.
Size
Millimetres, smallest to largest across a strand
Measured across the drill hole. Price rises steeply and unevenly with size, because the oyster's mortality rises with the size of the bead it is asked to carry. A 15mm South Sea is not fifty per cent dearer than a 10mm; it is several times dearer.
Matching
Excellent · Very good · Good · Fair
How well a strand or a pair agrees with itself across colour, lustre, shape and size. On a long strand this is months of work and it is a large part of what you are paying for. It is also the factor most often quietly skipped in a listing.
What arrives with the piece
Every piece ships with one, and the same information is on its page here before you buy it.
| 01 | A single sheet, signed and dated, listing all seven factors for the piece you bought — not for the model, for the piece. |
|---|---|
| 02 | The farm, the lease, the species of oyster and the harvest year. |
| 03 | The nacre measurement and the method used to take it. |
| 04 | The name of the person who graded it. Currently that is one person. |
Everything else people ask.
Because we published the whole scale and it is checkable. Read the grading standard, then check any piece against it — the lustre test in particular takes four seconds and needs nothing but a window. And if an independent laboratory disagrees with our report in the first year, we refund the piece and pay for their report.
Cultured, and so is essentially every fine pearl sold anywhere today. Natural pearls — formed without human help — effectively stopped entering the market in the 1930s and now appear at auction rather than in shops. A cultured pearl is grown by the same animal by the same process; a technician gives it the starting point instead of a grain of grit.
Most cultured pearls are a round shell bead with a coat of nacre grown over it. That coat is the pearl. A thick coat gives deep lustre and lasts generations; a thin one looks acceptable in a display case and wears through to the bead. Coat thickness is invisible from the outside, which is precisely why so few sellers mention it.
The actual piece. Every strand and every pair is photographed individually before it is listed, and what arrives is what you saw. The one thing the photograph cannot carry is lustre, which is why we would rather you came in.
Thirty days, for any reason or none, with shipping paid both ways and no restocking fee. Commissioned pieces are the exception and we will say so clearly in the proposal before you accept it.
Every twelve to eighteen months if you wear them often, longer if you do not. Silk stretches and absorbs skin oils, and a stretched strand is how pearls get lost. Restringing is free for life on anything bought here, and $95 on anything that was not.
Yes, insured and signature-required, with the duties and taxes calculated at checkout so nothing arrives with a surprise bill attached. Delivery inside the US is included in the price.
No. Bleaching is routine on commercial akoya and dyeing is routine on cheap freshwater and on pearls sold as "black". Nothing on this site has had either. Where a pearl has been lightly polished — a normal, harmless finishing step — the grading report says so.
If we get one wrong
Take any piece to an independent laboratory. If their assessment comes back materially below what we wrote on the report, send it back for a full refund at any point in the first year, and we will pay for the laboratory report as well.