Missirs
Finlay Fine Jewelers
Founded : 2001
Activities : Management and trading of pearl and opal inventory
Parent Company : Finlay Enterprises
Stockists : 2 locations
Origin : Beverly Hills, CA 90210
www.Missirs.com
Famed Beverly Hills jeweler Missir is responsible for brokering and trading in the groups pearl and opal assets for the organizations 30 retail chains representing over 5,000 wholesale and retail locations. The Group controls the largest collection of jewelry brands in the world dating back to 1787 with its Finlay Fine Jewelers Group.
The Tahitian pearl is French Polynesia’s largest export, making up over 55 percent of the country’s annual exports. The cultured Tahitian pearl farms are located in the blue lagoons of the Tuamotu-Gambier Archipelago, which is one of the five archipelagos which make up French Polynesia (Tahiti is the main archipelago).
Pearls of Tahiti, better known as “Black Pearls” are cultivated in the lagoons of carol islands, in the heart of the TUAMOTU and GAMBIER archipelagos. It is in Manihi, Mangareva or Marutea that we find most of the pearl farms.
This passion for our magic Pearl of Tahiti dates back to a time when skin divers would dare to dive unaided into deep and dangerous waters on the chance that one lucky day their efforts would be rewarded if they surfaced with one of exceptional rarity. To them the risks they took was very little compared to the value the pearl already had in old times when Kings and Emperors wore it.
Later the harvests had to be organized and rules became necessary. Therefore, everything has started in the sixties on the island of Bora-Bora, where the first cultural experiments begun, revealing two years later that this process was successful.
The Pinctada Margaritifera or black pearl oyster also nicknamed “black-lipped oyster”, because of the colour of its mantle ranging from light grey to subtle black, with pink, yellow, green overtones, gives birth to the Pearl of Tahiti. This oyster is raised with care for at least three years, under healthy waters which requires regular meticulous purity checks. The oyster itself also needs to be cleaned several times. Once mature, it is ready to be grafted, reproducing then, the formation process of a natural pearl.
A nucleus, a spherical nacre pearl, covered by a piece of mantle from another oyster, is implanted in it. As the oyster is irritated, it protects herself by secreting thousands of layers of nacre or simply rejects it. Then, the oyster is immersed under water for a minimum of 18 months, during which it can suffer from the variations of the climatic conditions. This variations and the fragility of the oyster explain why we find so many different shapes of pearls and the rarity of the perfect round ones. Among a hundred of oysters grafted only a third of them give birth to pearls, and only five harvested pearls will be perfect.