From the turquoise lagoons of French Polynesia, a miracle is born: the Tahitian pearl. In yesteryears, a shell fragment floating into an oyster would trigger nacre secretion, resulting in a natural pearl. Today, a shell nucleus (bead) is carefully inserted, thereby imitating nature’s grain of shell or sand. To protect itself from this irritant, the oyster secretes nacre, just as it would have in nature. Thus is the beginning of the fascinating story behind pearl cultivation.

Once the oysters reach maturity, our experts are once again called upon to skillfully insert a shell nucleus into each oyster. This process, called grafting, triggers thousands of layers of aragonite (“nacre”) to be deposited onto the nucleus core. Grafting requires artful precision in order to place the nucleus without harming the oyster, thus creating harmony between art and science.

At long last, the bustling season of harvest arrives and the oyster shells are lifted from the seas. Excitement fills the air as each pearl is finally revealed. Until this moment, no one can predict the outcome and only 1% of a harvest will produce gem quality pearls.