Chocolate Factory
With brown such an important color in jewelry design today, from brown diamonds to smoky quartz and even wood, it isn’t surprising that a new shade of brown is also becoming popular in pearls also. Enhanced “chocolate” Tahitian pearls add a warmer shade to the Tahitian palette of blacks, grays, and greens. It’s a pretty distinctive color that never really existed in Tahitians before, although there are lovely natural bronze and taupe colors. The enhancement process is proprietary and the companies involved have been pretty cryptic about the details but it is commonly characterized as “bleaching.” The latest issue of Gems & Gemology, GIA’s award-winning gemological journal, provides a few more details about these enhanced pearls, with an exhaustive analysis of treated and non-treated pearls treated by one company, Ballerina Pearl. The bottom line (saving you pages of reflectance spectra and photoluminescence charts) is that no foreign substance was found, lending credence to the claim that the pearls are indeed bleached, which would basically put them in the “enhanced” category rather than the “treated” category for those of you keeping track of these matters. That would seem to justify the strong market for these shades, which are priced pretty similarly to natural color Tahitian pearls. However, the same issue of G&G includes a report from Dr Henri Hanni of the SSEF on the subject of chocolate pearls. He tested five samples from three different dealers. Only one of the five was bleached with the new process: the other four were dyed, plain and simple. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, I would expect dyed pearls to be priced lower than the new enhanced product. Make sure you buy brown pearls from a reputable dealer who will correctly disclose the source of that fashionable color.
[…] Auch die aktuellen Verkaufszahlen unserer Perlen Kollektion D i V i N a in braun & kupfer sprechen dafür, dass brauntöne weiterhin auf dem Vormarsch sind. Und auch hier im amerikanischen Modern Jeweller wird über die “süße Schmuckpracht” berichtet. […]