Business & Finance: Superlatives Exhausted

Parched and stinking, Bahrein Island barely breaks the surface of the Persian Gulf. European pates soon addle, uninsulated from its vicious sun. Before its troughs of rotting oysters, queasy European nostrils quail. Impervious to sun and stink, Arab traders hunker down, paddle the bubbling compost, comb it with their fingers.

A blue-gummed, henna-bearded gaffer, Jack Horner-like, pulls out a lump. Feverishly he wipes the gluey carrion on a corner of his burnoose. Marshallah! A rose-pink pearl, pale, perfect, which—flesh-embedded—escaped the first casual pawing of the opened shells.

Wrapped in a shred of muslin and tucked in a soiled sash, the Pink Pearl is taken to Linga, across the Gulf. There appraisers sit with ancient scales, chaffer to the utmost kran,* seal their purchase with a solemn glass of tea. From Linga, the Pink Pearl journeys to Bombay or Bagdad, where foreign experts laud its lustre, symmetry, and flawlessness; drive less ceremonious bargains; swaddle the Pink Pearl in fluffy cotton; scurry back, elated, to the great jewellers of Fifth Ave., Bond St., Rue de la Paix.

Fifty-nine such Pink Pearls were recently threaded by Black, Starr & Frost (Manhattan) into one exquisite necklace, delicately blended, delicately matched. Amateur and professional connoisseurs last week acclaimed it the most magnificent in existence; exhausted superlatives; declared $685,000 a reasonable price.

Pearls fall into two main classes: true pearls and freshwater pearls. True pearls, or "orientals," are formed in oysters by the deposition of concentric layers of nacre, an iridescent substance, around a microbe or some other irritant. Freshwater pearls are formed in molluscs out of non-nacreous material, and are far less lustrous and valuable.

Four factors determine choice of true pearls: size, color, symmetry, and lustre. Size, of course, is immediately dependent on the length of the collector's purse, but the other three are judged by his taste and knowledge.

Imprimis, color: avicula margaritifera, the pearl oyster, is a capricious mother. Sometimes her offspring is white, sometimes pink, yellow, blue, black, but unless they are grotesquely malformed, all are precious. In the Far East, cream yellow is the favorite tint because it shows to excellent advantage against the Oriental skin. Similarly, Westerners prefer pink pearls; not a deep pink, which is almost invariably muddy, but a pale rosée. Color can best be examined by placing the pearl on white cotton under a strong natural light.

Item, symmetry: for earrings or a single pendant, the teardrop pearl is still fashionable, but for necklaces, bracelets, and tiaras, perfect sphericity is required. Experts know it on sight. Amateurs roll their pearls across a smooth black surface.

Item, lustre: for which there is neither test nor definition. It is the mellow glow emanating from an unblemished "skin," soft, warm, alive. If pearls are held between the eye and the light, some will show a translucent encircling band about one-fifth the width of their diameter. Such have the finer lustre.