Tassle Keepsake for Designer Pearls

You parted with your life savings for a stunning necklace of pearls. The necklace had a removable tassle attached. What does the tassle mean? In short, it means you have incredibly good taste, a sense of style, and buy only the best.

Jewelry designers have started a trend. A tassle sometimes appears on pearl necklaces as they are displayed for sale in art and jewelry galleries. The tassle is removable and not intended as part of the permanent necklace design. Rather, the tassle signifies the original high quality of the pearls employed in the piece. But there’s more.

Jewelry designers often buy their gemstones in bulk. When the gemstone is a pearl, they buy them in strands. Most drilled pearls are sold wholesale by the strand rather than one by one. Several strands of pearls are sometimes bundled together in a hank. This is where discounts accrue for pearls purchased wholesale several strands at a time. Buying in such bulk allows the designer to pass savings on to the customer. But, these strands of pearls have no tassles attached.

Pearls that have a tassle attached are sold one strand at a time, never in hanks, and only to discriminating buyers. That’s because they are expensive, even at wholesale. The tassle indicates to buyers a strand of high quality pearls, noted for their extraordinary luster, size, uniqueness, color, or shape. Designers look for these qualities in their pearl supplies even before working them into their jewelry creations.

Once fabricated into a finished piece, the tassle might be discarded, right along with the monofilament or wire that held the pearls on the strand. But designers have realized that both materials quality and attractive design are important to customers. The tassle is a visible indication of the pearl quality and value. To attach the tassle to the finished piece constitutes a momento of the original strand of extraordinary pearls from which the design was made.

Besides indicating beauty and value, the tassle continues the “story” of the pearls. It says that somebody thought the pearls were special enough for special handling right out of the mollusk. When a tassle accompanies the pearls to the finished piece, well, that means everyone who encountered them from clam to jewelry counter saw them as very special indeed!

You are to be commended on your choice if your pearl jewelry purchase included a tassle. Remove the tassle before wearing, but retain it as a keepsake of your discriminating sense of quality and design in pearl jewelry.


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