Lot 08
The Aubergine Line
Tahitian · Motu Ahé lagoon, Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia · lifted 2024 · graded New York
A bracelet is the hardest small piece to match, because the whole thing sits inside a hand's width and any pearl that disagrees is obvious. These twenty-two were pulled from a 400-pearl lot for a single overtone — the smoky purple the trade calls aubergine.
Steel-blue and green pearls from the same lot went to the Rangiroa Rope, where the variation is an asset. Here it would have been a flaw.
Double-knotted on charcoal silk with a concealed white gold box clasp, so the line is unbroken all the way round the wrist.
$3,800 including insured delivery and the signed report
Which length is right? Drawn to scale
Just below the collarbone. The default, and the safest gift.
- 30-day returns, shipping paid both ways
- Signed grading report with every piece
- Free restringing for life
Condition report Lot 08 · IO-TA-0244
- size
- 9.0 – 9.4mm
- length
- 7.5 inches
- count
- 22 pearls
- lustre
- Very good
- surface
- Lightly spotted — 86% clean
- nacre
- 1.6mm
- shape
- Round to near-round
- colour
- Dark grey body, aubergine overtone
- matching
- Very good
- clasp
- Concealed 18k white gold box clasp
Provenance
Motu Ahé lagoon, Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia. Lifted 2024. Graded and strung at the bench in Tribeca, New York.
Assessed by
Elin FerreiraGraduate Gemologist, GIA
Every figure above was measured on this piece. The standard
Lustre — Very good
Drag to see the grades either side of it.
Motu Ahé lagoon
Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia — Pinctada margaritifera — black-lipped oyster. A Tahitian pearl is dark all the way through — the colour is the oyster's own shell lip, not a treatment. What varies is the overtone floating on top of that dark body: the greens and violets people call peacock, or the smoky purple called aubergine.
Three other lots.
