03. Artisan jeweler: What this title means, and who I really am

I am often asked if I am a jewelry artisan.

I prefer to say that I give a place to what already exists.

It is a response that may seem evasive, but it is not. It is simply more honest than a yes or a no, and I believe you deserve the long version.

A question that comes up often

On paper, yes. Mother Pearly is registered as a jewelry artisan business, and I have my hallmark, registered with the customs office. This small mark stamped on certain pieces says that I stand behind them.

But I know what you imagine when you ask the question. A workbench, a file, a torch. This image is beautiful, but my profession was built elsewhere. So, rather than letting an image that does not resemble me float around, I will tell you how the jewelry you wear is truly born.

Where everything begins: the pearl

Everything begins with the pearl, and the pearl is me.

Before Mother Pearly, there was a journey. Pearl farms in Indonesia, where I went to see with my own eyes how a pearl is born. I saw how long it takes—years during which a living mollusk covers something that bothers it, layer by layer, until it becomes a gem. I also saw how many pearls are worth nothing when they come out of the water, and the eye required to find the ones that matter.

Then, I learned. Specialized training on pearls in Paris, to put words and criteria to what I had felt on the farms. The luster, the orient, the thickness of the nacre, the surface, the shape, the color. What makes a pearl beautiful, and what makes it stay that way for twenty years.

It is this knowledge that is at the heart of Mother Pearly. Every pearl you wear, I have chosen one by one. I look at it in daylight, I compare it, I turn it over. I set many aside. The ones I keep sometimes wait months for the piece of jewelry that will suit them. No one selects the pearls for me. It is my job, and it is the primary one.

What carries my hallmark

The second part is the design. Some of our collections start from an idea I have in mind, often long before it exists. The pearl alone, without the tension of a chain. The pearl in dialogue with a chain, in asymmetry. I decide everything that makes the piece: the material, solid 925 silver or yellow gold-plated, the length, the clasp, the silk thread and its color, the way the pearl will be held. I do the mounting myself. I string, I assemble, I close. These pieces of jewelry carry my hallmark.

A jewelry house

And then, I do what jewelry houses have always done: I surround myself with jewelers whose work I know, and nothing enters the collection without having passed through my hands. Sometimes I am also entrusted with a more precious project—a ring, a bracelet, wedding bands, in gold or platinum. For those, I work from the beginning with a jewelry workshop that has been in the business for over thirty years.

In any case, my role is the same. To choose, to design with you, to impose the level of excellence, to follow every step, and to let nothing pass that is not exactly what you expected.

Why I am telling you this

Because what touches me about this profession is not the technique, but what people feel when wearing a piece they have chosen. When a woman enters the world of Mother Pearly, she never arrives empty-handed. She already carries something with her—an emotion, a memory, a person she wants to keep close to her, or a moment she does not want to let fade. That "something" exists before the jewelry, and would exist without it. My work consists of recognizing the pearl that will be able to carry it, then giving it the form that will allow this emotion to land somewhere: on skin, at the hollow of a neck, around a wrist, to stay there for a long time. This is what I call giving a form to what already existed, and that is the phrase that founded Mother Pearly.

So, am I a jewelry artisan? Yes, in my own way; everything begins with the Pearl.

Soudaline, founder of Mother Pearly

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