Lot 06
The Keshi Collar
Keshi · Tallon Reef, Kimberley coast, Western Australia · lifted 2023 · graded New York
Keshi are what happens when an oyster rejects the bead it was given and coats the empty pocket anyway. There is nothing inside them but nacre, which is why the lustre is so hard and metallic — light is not stopped by a shell bead a millimetre down.
Every one is a different shape: flat petals, folded wafers, twisted lobes, from 6 to 12mm. Sorting a collar that reads as deliberate rather than accidental took longer than stringing any round strand we make.
These came out of the same Kimberley harvest as the Strand and the Drops. They are the cheapest thing we sell and the piece the atelier argues over most.
$1,450 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 06 · IO-KE-0033
- size
- 6 – 12mm, irregular
- length
- 16 inches
- count
- 74 pearls
- lustre
- Excellent — metallic
- surface
- Natural sculptural surface, ungraded by convention
- nacre
- Solid nacre — no bead nucleus
- shape
- Baroque keshi, no two alike
- colour
- White to silver, rose and green in the folds
- strung
- Knotted on fine grey silk
Provenance
Tallon Reef, Kimberley coast, Western Australia. Lifted 2023. 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 — Excellent — metallic
Drag to see the grades either side of it.
Tallon Reef
Kimberley coast, Western Australia — Pinctada maxima — silver-lipped oyster. The Kimberley runs one of the largest tides on earth — up to eleven metres twice a day. That water moves an enormous amount of food past a stationary oyster, which is why the shells here grow so large and lay down nacre so quickly.
Three other lots.
