Author | Lightnews

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 3h

These mixed color Tahitian black pearl strands go mostly from gray to green, but you see hints of purple and blue. The Pinctada margeritafera oyster, known as the black lipped oyster, produces them.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 19h

The dragonfly spends most of its life underwater as a nymph. It is a broad cultural symbol of transformation, change, the power of living in the moment. In Japanese culture the dragonfly (tombo) symbolizes courage, strength, and happiness.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 3d

Here is a beautiful Roseate heart pendant made for mother of pearl, the smooth inside of the oyster shell. Amazing how this organic material loves tropical light and color and reflects it back! This Eddie Borgo design is too ecological drops of water joined gracefully together.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 6d

The amazing color variation of Tahitian black pearls includes black, chocolate, copper, gray, green, blue, silver, purple, "aubergine", and "peacock".

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 6d

Here's from our latest fashion shoot for the holiday season. The photographer is adjusting a beautiful mixed strand of Tahitian black pearls. We were blessed with a rental studio positioned to collect tons of natural light that you can see on the pink dress. This with my phone, no strobes.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 10d

These ocean pearls studs come from the west coast of Australia, an inaccessible place called Kuri Bay on the Timor Sea. Ocean pearls require pristine water to thrive - the remoteness from humanity makes a big environmental difference.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 12d

Like many things revolutionizing a world our grandparents wouldn't recognize, here are lab diamonds. This is crystallized carbon created in a laboratory with identical hardness, conductivity, optical properties as a diamond dug out of the ground. We like them for jewelry because we know the source.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 16d

Photo shoots are fascinating. So many visual and personality elements of the brand converge. We rented a studio on 8th avenue just uptown of Moynihan station in NYC. It was a fantastic day for natural light and that shaped everything we did and came away with.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 18d

A pearl farm image that captures the color, clarity, and richness of the pearl cultivation environment. Ocean oysters require a pristine environment to make pearls. This reality makes pearl farmers pragmatic environmentists who protect water quality to safeguard their livlihood.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 20d

This is the pearl farm at Kamoka on Ahe Atoll, French Polynesia. Josh Humbert's dad built it out on a coral knoll in the lagoon. It's near the equator so sunrise is pretty much the same time year round. And this is about the time they start each day.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 20d

The business of professional pearl farming and the flamboyant sport of undersea diving collide. During the two years required for a grafted oyster to produce a pearl the shells must be cleaned about monthly to push back the shell-boring parasites that would damage the harvest or kill the oyster.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 21d

After two years thriving in lagoon waters of Ahe Atoll, a black Tahitian pearl is harvested from a Pinctada margaritafera oyster. The oyster can be grafted twice more.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 22d

Pre-holiday season photo shoot yesterday in Manhattan with this lovely model, a woman almost irrationally beautiful. There were big, waist-to-ceiling windows in the studio we hired and so much beautiful autumn light that we hardly used the photo strobes at all. This shot was with my phone.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 24d

These are Western Australian pearl farmers. The oyster is the Pinctada maxima, the largest in the world. They are harvested from the sea floor. Harvesters spend 8-hour shifts breathing through air hoses. The oysters are grafted to produce pearls and suspended in open sea water in these devices.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 26d

Bora Bora is an atoll with a mountainous island inset. It's an incredible place with a name that sounds like a dream. The resorts are opulent while main town has a very local feel. There is a pronounced stray dog problem owing to resource allocation priorities. It is heartbreaking.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · 28d

Akoya oysters from Japan are smaller than the ocean oysters that produce Tahitian and South Sea pearls. But they are beautiful! With tiger striped shells, their shell ridges fit together like little spoons. Here oysters are being grafted for pearls in Ise, Japan, during our last sourcing visit.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 25

What a great shot from our colleagues at Kamoka Pearl in French Polynesia! That's their pearl farm where they work daily. It's a wooden platform built 100 ft out into the atoll lagoon on a coral head. There's always time for a backflip! See the reef shark under him?

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 24

This bracelet strand of Japanese Akoya pearls is accented in a unique way: The pink gem is a ruby mined from Greenland. Rubies have an infamously conflicted sourcing history. Greenland offers a pure source alternative.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 21

The inside of an oyster shell is coated with nacre. Layer on layer of the substance creates a smooth, optically iridescent surface. And that's what pearls are made of.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 19

Ocean pearls are created over the course of a year or more, the oyster applying layer after layer of nacre, the same smooth, iridescent substance that lines the inside of an oyster shell. Truly, a pearl tells the story of the sea.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 18

Lab-grown diamonds routinely come in big sizes, up to seven carats. The largest lab-grown diamond on record is a 150.42 carat.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 16

We visit our Tahitian pearl farms, know our farmers by name, and can trace every pearl's journey from Atoll to your jewelry box.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 14

What makes Tahitian pearls 'black'? It's layer after layer of dark nacre applied under the ocean waves from Pinctada margaritifera oysters. The layering creates iridescence: peacock greens, silver, and charcoal hues. Each pearl is as unique as a fingerprint.

Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 11

These incredible cultivated pearls are from the west coast of Australia and come from the world's largest oyster, Pintada maxima, known as the white lipped oyster.

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Roseate Jewelry @roseatejewelry.com · Sep 9

Good enough to eat? It takes 3 years for the Pinctada Margaritafera oyster to produce a black pearl after the oyster is grafted. The oyster is strung in the atoll lagoon in the vibrant waters a French Polynesia. The shells get cleaned from shell-boring parasites by the indigenous fish.

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