Scallop pearls

The newest type of natural pearl available to collectors is the scallop pearl. It is found in a marine bivalve scallop that is native to the coast of Baja California, and is just beginning to be harvested. Highly variable in size and shape, they have mosaic-like patterns and cream to salmon or mauve colors with a semi-metallic to chatoyant sheen.

Lion's Paw pearls are natural pearls from the scallop "Nodipecten subnodosus ". They are calcareous concretions that are created by a bivalve organism whose shell resembles a lion's paw, hence their native name Mano de Leon or "hand of the lion". Lion's Paw pearls are found off the coast of Baja California and until the year 2000 no one in the gem industry had ever seen a natural pearl from this scallop. These natural pearls that are found within the organism are mostly symmetrical. There are buttons, rounds, drops, and ovals and they are in sizes from seed to 40 carats. Some of the shapes are baroque and quite interesting. These pearls are byproducts of harvesting scallops in the wild and they are very rare.

Lion's Paw pearls range in colors from white to deep royal purple with varying shades of oranges, pinks and plums. They are non-nacreous pearls with a mosaic pattern with a flash effect similar to the flame-like pattern on a conch (strombus gigas) and melo melo (melo amphora) pearl. However, unlike the conch and melo melo, which are univalves, the scallop is a bivalve filter feeder much like an oyster. The mosaic pattern that covers the entire surface of the pearls has a sheen-like or metallic three-dimensional effect when viewed in light.

Scallop pearls have been found casually for years by fishermen, but the shucking process is so fast that any pearls on the shell or within the mantle are not likely seen before shells and viscera are thrown overboard. The shucking process must be quick--- a matter of seconds only—because the volume and quality of the meat are of prime importance.
Information from a mollusk expert at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans indicates that pearls can form within the scallop’s body or between the mantle and the shell. The pearls are usually irregular and small, only 1-2 mm, although some reach 5-6 mm in older animals. Larger pearls are very rare. Only 1-5% of scallops produce pearls. (S.E. McGladdery, pers. Comm.. 2003).
The Scallop pearls have a silvery sheen, and some of the most attractive specimens are used for jewelry. Craig Fancy of Fancy jewelers in Annapolis Royal brought the existence of scallop pearls to the author’s attention in 2001. The first specimens submitted for study ranged from tiny to 10mm in length. The pearls were mostly off-white to pale tan in colour, and baroque in shape---definitely irregular, perhaps even "lumpy". As might be expected, some showed a much more attractive sheen than others. Some of the pearls were multiples.
SCALLOP PEARLS IN JEWELRY
Craig Fancy has been making jewelry using scallop pearls since about 1989, when a fisherman brought in some scallop pearls and asked him to set them in a pendant for his wife. Over the next six to eight years, he set many different shapes and sizes of scallop pearls in custom- made mountings for customers. In the 1990s, he began to design pieces of jewelry that were attractive and affordable for the local and tourist markets. These are now sold at the family jewelry stores in Annapolis Royal and Digby.
A visit to Fancy Jewelers in Annpapolis Royal, Nova Scotia permitted me to see and to photograph various pieces of jewelry made by Craig Fancy. Craig has developed several designs for earrings, pendants and rings in 14K gold that suit the delicate nature of the pearls very well. People bring the pearls in all kinds of containers: a 35-mm film canister holds about 200 pieces depending on the size. Of these there may be about ten pieces (round and half round) that have near perfect symmetry and the best colour. Of the rest, there will be about 30 pieces that have good colour and some symmetry----these can be ground or polished to make setting easier. The rest are too small, misshapen, or an undesirable brown colour.
The scallop pearls are usually cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner with a mild detergent, and then buffed lightly and cleaned. There is no other treatment—these are natural gems.
Most of the pearls used in jewelry are almost spherical, white to light tan in colour and about 3-5 mm in diameter. Pearls of >5 mm in diameter and of near spherical shape are not at all common. Three exceptional specimens were on hand at the time of our visit. Two were "button" shape, round, but flattened on one side. The tan one measured 9 x 10 mm d. x 9 mm high; the white one measured 12.2 mm d. x 8.5 mm high. The largest baroque pearl measured 20x9x8 mm. Over the years, Craig’s biggest and best specimens were four large rounds of 8-11 mm that he set in cage-style pendants. He has also seen one that resembled a .44 caliber bullet.
The chances of the Digby scallop pearl becoming a major new industry in Canada are remote. Although scallop pearls have the advantage of being a natural gem in a world where consumers must consider country of origin, treatments, and disclosure , the supply is small and unreliable. For the small business now in place , it is likely that the market can be expanded somewhat, with more knowledge and awareness of the scallop pearl. Craig Fancy is doing well to concentrate on a line of moderately priced jewelry of good quality. A scallop pearl makes a wonderful and appropriate souvenir of the Maritimes. Digby scallops pearls are certainly a worthy addition to the list of Canadian Gemstones.

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SCALLOP PEARL: Baja Beauty
Somewhere in Korea-maybe in a glass case, maybe in a vault- sits the most beautiful scallop pearl that natural pearl dealer Wes Rankin of Pacific Coast Pearls, Petaluma, California, has ever seen. It’s an 18 carat oval with a nutmeg-orange color like you sometimes see on the colorful shells of the bivalve mollusk that grows these pearls. This glory went to an Asian collector shortly after Rankin asked for time to chew on its hard-to-swallow price of nearly $2,000 per carat early this year. “When I called back three hours later, the pearl had been shipped,” he says of the costliest hesitation of his career.
Since first offering scallop pearls at the Tucson show in February 2000, Rankin estimates he has sold, on average, 100 of them a year. All were bought from divers who had collected them as curiosities or in the hope that they would one day find as avid an audience as the abalone pearl. Now that audience has emerged and there are nowhere near enough goods to feed its growing appetite.
Scallop pearls are probably the rarest of all natural pearls. I have never seen one used in a piece of jewelry, although the magnificent shells they come from are occasionally used for jewelry design. Two years ago, Departures featured a paprika-orange scallop shell pin, accented with turquoise and 18k gold, made by Cartier in 1958, retailing on Madison Avenue for $28,000. Imagine what a pearl from this shell would have looked like.
In any case, given the legendary beauty of the scallop shell, it is surprising to learn that only one of the four specialists in natural pearls contacted for this article, K.C. Bell in San Francisco, had ever seen a scallop pearl before the tail end of the 1990’s. As far as natural pearl veteran Gina Latendresse of American Pearl Company in Nashville, Tennessee, is concerned, they’re like a newly discovered pearl variety.
The question remains: Why did it take America’s small community of natural pearl dealers so long to take notice of the scallop pearl? The answer is simple: there was no need to.
The sudden resurgence of natural pearls is the biggest breaking news in the pearl world. Demand for these treasures in Japan, Korea, the Middle East, Europe, and, lately, America is so strong this left-for-dead market is staging a revival that verges on a resurrection. Dealers, designers, manufacturers, jewelers, and collectors who watched the values of South Sea and Tahitian pearls slide far from the record high prices they commanded in the early 1990’s are taking refuge in natural pearls. The stampede started with conch pearls and has moved with flash-fire quickness to Oriental, natural black, American freshwater, abalone and, now, scallop pearls.
If this comeback comes as news to you, you’re not alone. The natural pearl market has been ignored for decades. Quite frankly, there was no need to pay it any attention. The cultured pearl market was providing enough investment gems to keep collectors happy. Starting in the 1950’s, Burma supplied white and golden cultured pearls as rare and coveted as its rubies. Then, in the late 1970’s, Tahiti bowed on the world stage with its magnificent farm-raised aubergine and neon-green pearls. Last, Australia began producing pearls that vied with Burma’s for beauty.
All in all, the cultured pearl market could be counted on to meet needs for connoisseur pearl. But as South Sea and Tahitian pearl production mushroomed and prices fell, collectors turned back to pearls that were gathered, not grown. “It’s like we’ve gone back to another era,” says Latendresse.
WEST COAST WONDERS
Scallop pearls come from a breed of bivalve mollusk named the Mano de Leon, which is Spanish for “lion’s paw.” This breed of scallop, classified as Nodipecten sudnodosus, is found, says Paula Mikkelsen of the American Museum of Natural History, in Mexico’s inland Sea of Cortez as well as the Pacific side of its Baja coast. Unlike the conch, which is rapidly approaching endangered species status, the lion’s paw scallop is plentiful and unthreatened. But too few of them produce pearls, probably less than one in 10,000.
For the most part, explains Jeremy Norris of Oasis Pearl, Albion, California, scallop pearls are symmetrical, frequently found in round, drop, oval, and button shapes. Colors range from white to brown to orange with pearls frequently exhibiting a handsome deep brownish-purplish hue. Occasionally, pearls boast coveted spice-rack colors-everything from saffron yellow to tumeric orange to chili-powder reddish-brown-but these are extremely rare. Some larger pearls, usually ones with baroque shapes, have colors that graduate from light to dark or are marbled. All in all, most scallop pearls have deep tones.
Like the conch and melo pearls, the scallop pearl is classified as “porcelaneous” rather than “nacreous”. Some even seem to have the frame structure for which the Caribbean conch is famous. Most have what appears like a mosaic, or mottling, of light and dark colors, an optical phenomenon, explains Neil Landman, curator of the American Museum of Natural History’s pearl exhibition in 2001, caused by light reflections and refractions from tiny crystal-like needles distributed at angles to one another. As for price, the range is wide but still affordable: $100 to $2,000 per carat.