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And just like that, the first few months of the year are already in the books and we are moving in to the warmer temperatures of spring!  Since I last posted here, there has been a lot on exciting things going on.  Aside from my Seahawks winning the Superbowl (apologies to any Bronco or 49er fans), we have kicked off the year of the horse by doing what we always do. That is travel like crazy people, design as much as we can, and search for gems that we love.  These last 6 weeks have taken us from Hong Kong, New York, Tucson, Germany, Tahiti, and of course Minnesota as I currently sit in my hotel waiting to celebrate our 20th anniversary tomorrow.  The year of the horse is said to be a year where internal strengthening should be the focus and the calm and steady energy contrasts to the unpredictable nature of the year of the snake.  That being said, as we begin to launch our new collections for the year tomorrow, here is a look at some of the things that we have been up to in our travels and a little peek in to what you may see from us this year!

One of my favorite shows in the US is the Tucson Gem Show.  While most often you see us in the more structured and clean- cut confines of the convention center, it is the obscurity and rustic nature of this gem even that I love the most.  That is going through the hotel rooms, meeting with miners, seeing beautiful mineral specimens, and looking at unique stone rough and envisioning what they will look like when we cut them.  This is a gem geeks paradise where the most obscure and the most well known rock hounds and gem lovers unite to dig through buckets of stones and imagine! My Mom took off 2 days early as she had to jet off to London for another show, which left my Dad and myself to wander the vast land of Tucson on our own.

While we do not exhibit at this show, and most of the pearl farmers do not attend, we take a few days at this show to walk around the different exhibits, meet with friends, and see what new stones are out there.  This year, we studied and collected several unique stones and have already began cutting them in anticipation of a release later in the year!  While I would love to tell you about these stones, I can’t (apologies for building that story up, just to throw water all over it!). These truly are going to be stones with unique characteristics that cannot be put in to words and absolutely must be seen first- hand!

Inhorgenta

From Tucson, I took off for Munich, Germany to attend the Inhorgenta fair, as a guest speaker at the International Pearl Forum.  For me, so far this is one of the highlights of my year.  For the last year, the organizers of this gem fair have been planning in conjunction with sustainablepearls.org a world conference that would serve as a way to bring in new and old lovers of the pearl to help them better understand all aspects of the gem.  I was fortunate to share the stage with two of the top pearl houses in Europe in Gellner and Schoeffel, my good friend Jacques Cristophe Brannelec from the Jewelmer farms in the Philippines; who shared his family insight in to how they culture the best quality golden pearls, representatives from the farms in the Sea of Cortez, the Swiss Gem lab, and the founding researchers from Sustainablepearls.org.  This truly was a distinguished grouping of professionals with a shared passion for the pearl, which I was very happy to be a part of.  My presentation centered around our family philosophy on pearls and gems, how we believe it translates to better gems for our customers, and our emphasis on education.  We feel that it is our responsibility to all of you to bring you along as we go to the farms through our TV visits, blog posts, videos, and photos, so that we can bring you the most honest story behind our gems.  In essence, we want to bring you the true story of the farmer so that you can better understand the gem and therefore make great decisions when purchasing pearls from us.  Being a part of this group was truly an honor for me.

Last on my list of travel highlights was the March show in Hong Kong.  While March is the smaller of the major conventions in Hong Kong, this show is always wonderful and filled with amazing jewelry.  Much like Tucson, we do not exhibit, but we spend at least 3 days walking the shows and covering 2 conventions.  As with all Hong Kong shows, this is a chance for a good majority of the industry to get together and share news coming from their respective areas.  As it pertains to us on the pearl side, we get a chance to see new harvests from January/February, see the trends and culturing habits from specific areas and farms, and hear about new projects and what projections for the coming months yields will look like.  On the stone side, we can see what the cutters are looking at for the year, and what ideas we can design around as well as see the prices and how they fit in to the market.

All in all, it is very busy, but very exciting as well!  The gratification of seeing a new design come to life is great, but when you see projects such as new stones or unique pearls that we have been working on for a few years come to fruition, it is amazing.  Throughout the year, we will be sharing these projects that we have been working on with you and we hope that you love them as well!  See you tomorrow for our 20th anniversary, and again, thank you all for 20 years on TV!