ABALONE MABE PEARL: Opal of the Sea

Innovation makes recall of the time before it a nearly impossible feat. Try to remember pre-fax and pre-cell phone living. Similarly, jeweler Bob Fisher has a difficult time recalling his professional life before revolutionary changes in April 2001. That's when he became the first jeweler in the U.S. to stock cultured abalone pearls from New Zealand.

That's also when he became living proof that in a Wal-Mart world big things can still happen to very small businesses. For the past 20 years, Fisher has run a tiny 700-square-foot store in Hendersonville, North Carolina, all by his skillful lonesome.

Without intending to do so, Fisher launched the American market for farm-raised abalone pearls. "I never dreamed I'd be getting e-mail inquiries from as far away as California and Arizona," he says.

If you lived in the continental U.S. or Canada and you somehow found out about these newcomers and went to the web site of their sole producer, Eyris Blue Pearls, you were sent to Fisher. This is why 60 percent of his abalone pearl sales are made over the Internet. Many other customers are web walk-ins who decide to drive to the southern end of North Carolina for live rather than screen viewings of the pearls.

"From the moment I put them out, I knew I had something that set me apart from every store in my state, if not the nation," Fisher says proudly. And with prices for most of his custom-design abalone earrings and pendants between $600 and $1,200, he knew he had an exclusive that combined his customer's intense desire for rarity and beauty with their pronounced need for budget pricing. "I had the best of both worlds: an affordable gem that looked like it cost a bundle."

That Fisher remained king of the abalone pearl market for nearly five years is almost as great a marvel as the still little-known South Sea marvels that he sells. Now he will have to share his once-exclusive domain with other jewelers. Eyris Pearls, the abalone pearl producer headquartered at Whangamoe Inlet, on New Zealand's Chatham Islands, recently named Imperial-Deltah, East Providence, Rhode Island, its sole U.S. distributor. Company head Peter Bazar intends to make Eyris Blue Pearls a thriving pearl brand. Already Bazar has invited noted designers to create pieces for an abalone pearl line.

PLEASURE DOMES

There's something I neglected to tell you about New Zealand cultured abalone pearls. They're mabes, a pearl grown affixed to the inside of a shell and not completely enclosed in nacre. Because they usually form as nacre domes, they were victimized with the name of half-pearls. Unfortunately, such bad-taste semantics conjures up an image of a pearl that is incomplete.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. A mabe pearl is a wholly complete cultured pearl. However, because it grows attached to the inside of a shell, its base cannot be covered with nacre. So, instead, it must be cut away from the shell and sealed with mother-of-pearl. But the rest of the pearl is encased in nacre.

No doubt you have seen beautiful South Sea and Tahitian mabe pearls. These dome pearls look identical to full pearls in terms of color, luster, and surface. But, of course, they are usually much less expensive.

In the case of abalone mabes, there are no round, oval, pear, or baroque shaped counterparts. Not yet anyway. The Eyris Company has chosen not to attempt to grow conventional pearls because the abalone mussel does not lend itself to the kind of nucleation that would lend itself to production of self-contained, entirely nacre-enclosed pearls. It is much more efficient and effective to grow mabes.

Nevertheless, growing mabes in abalone takes tender loving care and flawless surgical precision. "Abalone," says Eyris' founder Roger Beattie, "are hemophiliacs that can bleed to death from a single nick."

Don't confuse abalone with the hardy oysters used for most pearl culturing. Abalone are sea snails with a large central muscular foot. The main reason to use them for pearl farming is the fact that they tend to create vibrant, lustrous nacre that takes on the spectacular color play for which their shells are famous. There is nothing comparable in appearance to an abalone pearl except very fine opal. No wonder Eyris is just the most successful of several farms who have attempted to grow abalone pearls in the last two decades. Although there are more than 100 varieties of abalone throughout the world, Beattie uses the paua variety native to New Zealand because it possesses the highest degree of iridescence of any abalone shell. As the creature swaddles the nucleus in nacre, it exhibits swirling multicolors that remind one of an object that has been encased in an opalizing substance.

Most New Zealand mabes are either deep aqua blues or lively teal greens, usually with wisps of pink. But predominantly pink pearls are known to occur.

Understandably, Beattie is reluctant to disclose the secrets of pearl culturing he has developed since starting his venture in 1989. Eyris Pearls is a vertically-integrated company that grows its own paua shells and nucleates them using proprietary techniques. Beattie now has five farms and usually harvests at each after three years growing time. Asked why he named his company Eyris, he answers, "I saw a connection between the iris of the human eye with its layers that act as light absorbers and reflectors and the colorful layers of the abalone pearl which give it its unique light reflecting qualities."