Rings

The pearl, first. These are built around a pearl that was worth building around: a rare baroque, an unusual color, a size or a roundness that does not come along often. The setting exists to present that pearl rather than compete with it, which is the opposite of how most jewelry is made, where a design is drawn and a pearl is found to fill it.

Then the piece as a whole. This is high jewelry, made by houses that spend years assembling material of this caliber. There is one of each here, and these are not pieces you will find on other websites.

Yes. Every photograph and every video on this page is of the actual piece, shot by us in our Los Angeles office. Nothing here is a stock image or a representative sample.

That matters more with pearls than with almost anything else. Two pearls of the same type, size and grade can differ visibly in luster, overtone and surface, so a representative photograph would not tell you what you were buying. What you see is what ships.

A high jeweler might hold one or two pieces of this caliber at a time, kept back for the clients who understand them. We acquire complete collections from established houses rather than buying piece by piece, which is how a vault ends up full of them.

We buy collections outright and we do not carry a retail showroom, so the pieces are priced against what we paid rather than against what a jewelry house would need to charge for them. Many were also made when gold and large pearls cost considerably less than they do now, and in some cases the pearls are no longer available in that size at all.

Sometimes, and not always by much. Many of these mountings carry diamonds around the shank, which limits how far a jeweler can move them. Ask us about the specific piece before you buy and we will tell you honestly what is possible.

Yes, by appointment at our Los Angeles office. If you would rather not travel, a video call from the vault gets you closer to the pearl than most people ever get across a counter. A viewing does not hold the piece.

Tell us. Not everything in the safe has been photographed yet, and pieces are still being added. If you are looking for a particular pearl type, size, color or shape, we will go and look.