Assael Collection: 12.0–14.5 mm Aubergine Tahitian Pearl Necklace, 18.75 inches

Tahitian tone

How we read the tone of this piece

When we buy Tahitian pearls we do not buy them by hue. We buy them by tone, meaning how light or dark the bodycolor is. A parcel is sorted along that scale first and the color names come afterward. It is the working vocabulary of the trade, and almost nobody explains it to buyers.

• LightPale silver-gray. Reads soft in daylight and wears easily.
• Medium LightSilver with the color beginning to show. Overtones read clearly against a lighter bodycolor.
• MediumThe middle of the range, and the most common. Enough depth to read as a dark pearl with the color still fully visible.
• Medium DarkNoticeably deeper. Color is still present but sits further back, and becomes more apparent in direct light.
• DarkThis piece. On the darkest pearls the bodycolor can approach black, so much of the visible color comes from the overtones across the surface.

The reason this matters is practical. Two strands can both be honestly described as green with peacock overtones and look nothing alike, because one is pale enough to read as silver in daylight and the other is nearly black. Color does not separate them. Tone does.

Darker is not better, and it does not cost more by itself. Tone tells you which piece suits you, not which is finer.

Tahitian color

How we read the color of this piece

This piece — Aubergine

A Tahitian pearl does not have one color. It has a bodycolor, the main color of the pearl, and it may have one or more overtones that appear across the surface as it moves. Describing a piece like this one as black would tell you almost nothing about what you are looking at.

We list the colors we can actually see, most dominant first, and we stop at three. Beyond that the list stops describing the piece and starts describing the species.

Overtones shift with the light and the viewing angle, so the same pearl can read differently as it moves. That is why a piece can look different in a photograph than in the hand, and why we photograph every one of these ourselves rather than using stock images.

Every color here grew in the oyster. Nothing we sell in this category is dyed or color enhanced.

Tahitian grading

What Select Gem means on this strand

Our grades consider luster, shape, surface and matching together, and luster is what they turn on. For surface we describe what the piece actually looks like rather than quoting a clean percentage. At these sizes a piece will almost always carry some marking, and a number cannot tell you whether that marking matters.

• ALow to medium luster, noticeable variation from the stated shape, and marking readily visible across the piece.
• AA+Medium to high luster with some variation in shape. More marking, sometimes accepted for the beauty of the piece as a whole.
• AA+/AAAVery high luster, closely conforming to its stated shape. Most pearls very clean, with a few carrying more. The combined grade describes variation in surface, not mixed luster or an inconsistently matched strand.
• AAAVery high luster, closely conforming to its stated shape, clean overall with any marking minor enough not to draw the eye.

Select Gem. This piece. A selection that sits outside this scale rather than above it. Not a tier we sort into, but a collection built over time: exceptional natural color, shape and surface at once, with any marking slight or sitting where a setting will cover it. Collected one pearl at a time, then assembled pearl by pearl.