Tahitian Harvest Strands

Two months ago I received the first request for a Tahitian "Harvest" strand. It's something we've been encouraged to make for some time, but there are usually so many different things I "want" to work on and I rarely get to them all.

It was decided by the team that we would make a few of these strands for the September Connoisseur event, so when a request came in for something special in July, I decided to take the reigns personally. Fast-forward two months later and I believe we've made a total of 22 strands, and I've personally made most of them.

What is trending as a "harvest strand" is a strand of pearls that represents what one would expect to find in a real pearl harvest. When you can appreciate the beauty of one of these strands, it's even easier to appreciate the effort put in to grow these pearls and match them into graded strands.

Finding a three-strand clasp that would work for something this massive is not an easy task so we did the only thing we could - make a clasp from scratch. On a good note, however, this gave us the ability to customize it and add an extender so the strand can be worn short or long with all the pearls showing. You probably noticed the space between the strands above as well. This is so when the strand is being worn long, the inner strands don't overtake the outer and overlap.

And just for fun, I made one "harvest" strand of freshwater pearls just to see how it would come out. I used a lot of really special keshi, metallics, ripples and even souffle pearls in this one. It was a fun piece.

I am thinking of hanging up the harvest strand hat for a while, but my good friend Josh Humbert of Kamoka Pearls had a good idea when he was here last month -- a vault strand. Now that could get dangerous!

Hisano and I are hopping on a plane to Hong Kong and should be airborne within the hour!