Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
He told me the story (obviously there was one). It was in the days of his grandfather, when a great pestilence had followed a war with the Sultan and killed off the people. Even the fish had perished in that plague and had floated on the sea in their thousands.
‘Now the people became stupid because they thought that soon they would all be dead. The rice paddies were neglected, the caraboas were allowed to run wild, the fishing nets were in holes, the sails of the boats stayed unmended and the fishermen did not put to sea. My grandfather was very sad. He had taught them all they knew, a better way of planting, a better way of making their sails. He judged them and led them in battle. When the prayers of the Imam and the fastings he ordered availed nothing, then my grandfather knew that a strong magic was working against them all.
‘One day he went down to the seashore along. As he was walking along, looking at the ground, he saw in the middle of a heap of dying seaweed a single green eye. Then he saw it was not an eye, but a coconut pearl, so he picked it up. He knew that the pearl did not want to be picked up, for it fought against him, but he wrapped it up in his headcloth and took it home. After that the pestilence stopped. And so my father kept the coconut pearl as a hostage, and it gave him good counsel. It will be an evil day for us when it is lost to us.’
That was my memory of Palawan as I read the letter of a man from Brooklyn. Had he in truth obtained the lucky pearl of Palawan? And what had happened to Panglima Hassan and his people since its loss? I have not found out.
I had a sort of second-hand interest in the historic Hapsburg pearls—a far cry, these, from the humble mascot of a savage tribe. They were a magnificent collection. The Empress Maria Theresa and the other ladies who wore them had to swathe them in many loops around their necks and bosoms. But no longer are they in the possession of the fallen Hapsburgs. They are now owned by a multimillionaire who lives in the South of France.
These gems passed through the hands of an old partner of mine, a Paris dealer, the most sporting and enterprising of his kind, who deserved the profit that he made. It was at the the time the ex-Emperor Charles, last of the Austrian emperors, needed funds urgently for the purchase of the aeroplane and the provision of many other items necessary to his plan, that spectacular re-entry into Hungary to regain his throne. He sold the pearls for what he could get for them, and yet in the end the sacrifice got him nowhere. The Hapsburg star had set.
Speaking of royal pearls, there are the famous Hanoverian pearls. They are long ropes of magnificent gems, ‘cascading to the knees’, as one writer has put it. They belonged originally to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and a very unhappy lady, despite the fact that her pearls went treble-stranded round her waist and bosom. Other royal wearers after her were Queen Victoria and then Queen Alexandra.
One day when the latter queen was stepping into the state coach which was to take her to the opening of Parliament this rope of pearls broke on the woodwork of the coach. Some of the pearls were scattered and rolled everywhere. Whether they were all counted over on the spot as they were found it not recorded; presumably, in spite of the urgent need of royalty to be punctual, and particularly on such occasion, they were, for not a pearl (it is said) was missing when the state coach moved on.
This is not a book of elegant literary quotations, but I read a great deal and whenever I see anything on the subject of pearls it sticks. As often as not the author is misinformed—after all, no expert thinks much of the layman’s knowledge—though I think few who ought to know better knew as little as Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine goldsmith, who in an amusing anecdote referred to pearls as ‘fishes’ bones’.
They have, of course, nothing to do with fishes, but are the product of successive coats of nacre on some irritating object inside an oyster’s shell. The core of a pearl may be a grain of sand, a tiny shell or a minute marine animal which was penetrated inside the oyster. If many coats are deposited evenly over a long space of time, the result may be a perfectly round fine pearl. Usually it is nothing of the sort, and round pearls are the rarest of all. There are also oval, drop-shaped, button-shaped and common baroque (irregular) pearls. Their color and luster tell the expert exactly what part of the world they come from. The true Oriental pearl comes from the Persian Gulf, where it has been fished by Arabs since early times in primitive fashion. It is only quite recently that the Australian pearling grounds were discovered, perhaps fifty of sixty years ago, but the pearls found there, though often very fine, are quite different from the Oriental pearls, and the oysters out of which they come are of another kind. The Japanese pearl oyster is different again, and not a producer of good pearls or good shell. But the Japanese pearl oyster has the distinction of being the stepmother of the cultured pearl.
Nowadays, almost the first question a pearl merchant is asked is: ‘What is a cultured pearl?’ and next: ‘Can you tell the difference?’ A cultured pearl is made by introducing, in a special way, a foreign body into a living oyster’s shell. If the foreign body is very minute, it stands the same chance of being covered evenly and well with nacre so as to produce a fine pearl just as any other foreign body, accidentally introduced. That is, perhaps a ten thousand to one chance. In such a case it would be as a ‘real pearl’, indistinguishable from any natural pearl, although tending to be second class, as most Japanese pearls are. In any case, its sheen and luster would show where it had come from. But cultured pearls started on very tiny cores are not a commercial proposition, and it is the rule to insert a core of some size and spherical in shape so that a largish round pearl can be produced in a reasonable time, for it takes years for the oyster obligingly to deposit the thin layers of nacre on the pearl. Thus the expert can always tell the cultured pearl from others because it usually consists of a small bead coated more or less lavishly with mother of pearl. This gives it a different look from pearls which are pearly right through.
Nevertheless, the cult of the cultured pearl has given many a lady what she longs for—a real pearl necklace of handsome appearance. For cultured pearls, even if they are not true aristocrats, are at least not imitations, and thus are fitted to give satisfaction to the feminine heart. A doctor in one of Anatole France’s novels deals satirically with that longing. ‘I often see children with strawberry marks,’ he says, ‘whose mothers say that they desired strawberries before their birth. I am waiting to see a baby marked with a pearl necklace.’
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