From Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece Girl with a Pearl Earring to the legendary Peregrina, found in the Gulf of Panama and passed on through the centuries among European royals before landing in Elizabeth Taylor’s fabulous jewelry collection, pearls have long pervaded popular culture and have never ceased to fascinate jewelers, historians, and naturalists.
This month, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, in collaboration with the Qatar Museums Authority, hosts “Pearls,” a look at the gem’s history and symbolism across both Eastern and Western societies.
The show begins with a primer on the natural process leading to the creation of the rare and precious commodity and on the development of pearl fishing and trade. The pearl is born inside a live mollusk, the result of a defense mechanism triggered when the animal reacts to a piece of foreign matter—often a parasite or a tiny piece of shell—by secreting nacre, a crystalline substance, and casting layers of it over the particle. The many species of pearl-bearing mollusks account for the surprising range of pearl shapes and colors on display.
But the core of the exhibition traces the evolution of the pearl as a symbol of virtue, power, wealth, and elegance throughout history, from antiquity up to its contemporary status as a favored jewel of celebrity trendsetters like Marilyn Monroe and Taylor.
“No gem in history has been as consistently fashionable and desirable as the pearl,” says jewelry historian Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, who curated the show along with Hubert Bari, director of the future pearl and jewelry museum in Doha, Qatar.
In Imperial China, pearls were thought to hold the soul of the oyster, and only immediate members of the imperial family and the First Concubine were allowed to wear them, while in Japan, some believed a princess who married against her wishes shed pearl tears.
“The cult of the Virgin Mary was dominant in the Middle Ages, and the pearl was adopted as a symbol of her purity,” Chadour-Sampson says.
After Christopher Columbus found new sources in the Caribbean, flooding the market in the early 1500s, pearls became more prevalent among European royalty as markers of power and wealth.
“By the 17th century, the use of pearls became widespread in jewelry worn by royals and aristocrats,” says Chadour-Sampson. “Improvements in stone-cutting techniques especially of diamonds made pearl-and-diamond jewelry even more fashionable.”
When Charles I of England was executed in 1649, he was wearing a single teardrop-shaped pearl earring. “It was fashionable then for men to wear pearls,” Chadour-Sampson says. “For King Charles, it was a fashion statement and a sign of vanity.”
The earring is exhibited in the show along with an authentication note handwritten by Queen Mary II, his granddaughter, that states, “This pearle was taken out of ye King my grandfather’s ear after he was beheaded & given ye Princess Royall.”
During the Victorian era, pearl jewelry took on sentimental significance. The show features a heart-shaped gold brooch given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert on their wedding anniversary in 1843. Surmounted by a crown with four Scottish freshwater pearls, it was meant as a reminder of their visit to Scotland the previous year.
No history of pearls would be complete without mention of the Japanese entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto, who at the turn of the last century developed a technology enabling the production of cultured pearls. “By the 1940s, the cultured pearl had transformed the entire economy of pearls,” Chadour-Sampson says. “Thanks to Mikimoto, every woman could own a pearl necklace.”
Though known for the song “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” screen legend Marilyn Monroe rarely wore jewelry and owned few pieces. One of these, on display at the V&A, was a Mikimoto necklace of 44 Akoya pearls given to her in 1954 by her second husband, baseball player Joe DiMaggio, during their honeymoon in Japan. Monroe was so attached to them that she wore them often—even to court when she divorced him nine months later.
Other jewels on exhibit include pieces by Bulgari, Cartier, Chaumet, Lalique, and Tiffany, highlighting the savoir faire of these century-old houses. Equally remarkable, though, are the designs by contemporary jewelers. Striking in their creativity, they reveal a trend away from the perfect white orb toward unusually shaped or colored pearls.
Hemmerle is showing its iconic Tarantula brooch, designed with a dark brown horse-conch pearl centerpiece set against Umba sapphires and brown and white diamonds. The brown pearl, weighing over 111 carats and measuring 27.47 millimeters in size, is the world’s largest of its kind and the most intense in color. Yoko London, a specialist in colored pearls, has several pieces in the show, including the Mezze Luna necklace and earrings, a graduated palette of naturally colored South Sea Keshi pearls.
The show ends with a section exploring the mass production of freshwater pearls in China today and the impact of their abundance in the market.
Says Chadour-Sampson, “We want the visitor to think about the ever-changing value of pearls and what, over the centuries, has gone into making a perfect pearl necklace.”
“Pearls” is on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London through January 19, 2014.
The following appeared in BlouinLifestyle.com Magazine.
