Here's Roseate founder, Pam Cloud, the former Chief Merchandising Officer for Tiffany & Company. She's pictured at Kakuda Pearl Farm in Ise, Japan, learning about Akoya oyster grafting.

This is a 4.5 carat lab grown pear-shaped diamond. Made of crystallized carbon, it is compositionally, structurally, and optically identical to a diamond from a mine. Look up how much a 4.5 carat mined diamond costs. How about a diamond that is about a third the cost of the lowest price you see?

Here is a ring designed by famed Tiffany designer Angela Cummings. The inset is mother of pearl, cut from the inside of a Pinctada Maxima oyster shell. Like a storm front, it suggests wild, unspoken mystery. It flashes glints of red and green when the light hits it differently.

What you see is nacre, calcium carbonate crystals, secreted by the oyster's mantle, layered so precisely they diffract light like a prism. This French Polynesian oyster is the only creature on earth that makes this pearl color. The oyster has no idea. It's just protecting itself from an irritant.

Methinks it were an easy leap to pluck bright honor from the pale faced moon. - Hotspur, Henry IV, Part 1 (Act 1, Scene 3)

It is Easter Sunday with all the promise of springtime and renewal. Whatever you have been carrying through the winter, this morning you are allowed to set it down.

Ahe atoll, French Polynesia, the prodigal beauty of the tropical Pacific.

Waiting for the master. What else matters?

Some days there is no minimalism. Only complexity.

The cherry blossoms are in bloom around the Tidal Basin in Washington. Spring reaches in.

Spring arrives and the line between dreaming and waking dissolves. These mother of pearl wings, cut and inlaid from the inside of an oyster shell, they remember the sea. The rose remembers the garden.

The rarest of the oceans.

Here's a design-forward bullet train photographed in Japan, so new the Japanese are taking pictures of it. This is the Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen "Kamome" (かもめ), operated by Kyushu Railway Company (JR Kyushu). It was designed by industrial designer Eiji Mitooka.

"Black" pearl is a legal designation, not a color denotation. What you actually see shows peacock, chocolate, aubergine, steel, bronze, silver, if you are lucky all on one strand. The oyster decides. We just wait. "In the surface of the great pearl he could see dream forms." - John Steinbeck

George Kakuda shows us the pearl farm on Amakusa island, Japan.

The Kakuda pearl farm is on Amakusa island in southern Japan. Their website tagline is the auspicious: "Delivering joy and happiness to all." They graft Akoya oysters waterside at the farm.

George Kakuda is a second-generation pearl farmer and a leader in the sustainable farming movement in Japan. George is our partner for Akoya pearls. Here he is (right) at the pearl farm working the Akoya oysters.

These are Japanese Akoya pearls, sustainably bred in seawater. They are smaller. The oysters are the size of what you get at the oyster bar rather than the salad-plate size of Australian pearls. They have playful color variations that we accent with the heart theme extender chain.

This is from a pearl sorting facility in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. South Sea pearls are the largest and rarest pearls on earth, ranging from 10 to 20 mm. They are never colored and have a natural glow and luster.

This is the largest oyster in the world, Pinctada Maxima, shown here at the pearl farm where we source for jewelry, Kuri Bay, Australia. There's a beautiful South Sea pearl.

Oysters producing black pearls in French Polynesia are suspended in lagoons in tubular structures that protect them from shell boring parasites. Enclosed sea environments magnify threats. South Sea pearl oysters from Western Australia are suspended in pallets out in the open water of the Timor Sea.

The idea of dedicating a day to water first emerged in 1992 at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. The UN General Assembly officially designated March 22 as World Water Day, with the first observance in 1993.

Still wet.

At 10:46 EST this morning, winter ends. And this will be, well, earth shifting. There's just a tilt of the Earth, a lengthening of light, the quiet return of everything worth waiting for. "In March I'll be rested, caught up and human." Sylvia Plath from a letter to her mother.

This is the airport at Ahe Atoll, French Polynesia, where we source Tahitian pearls. Three flights per week. People show up and open the airport and canteen two hours before arrival and then close right after.

Here's an image of the Kamoka pearl farm that Josh Humbert's dad built out on a coral knoll in the middle of Ahe Atoll lagoon. It's a terrific oasis for pearl farming. The temperature stays in a narrow range. Sunrise and sunset are between 4:30 am and 5:30 am throughout the year.

And here's the final product, a "mixed" black Tahitian pearl strand. You can see color variations in the greens and blues, champagne, and brown. This is our most popular strand, right from the pearl farm at Kamoka. We know the farm, we know the people. I shot this image yesterday in Manhattan.

These are black Tahitian pearls harvested at Kamoka.

Here is Josh Humbert at the pearl grafting station, Kamoka Pearl, Ahe Atoll, French Polynesia. On a zoom Josh is typically shirtless and looking 20 years younger for his age than anyone else on the call.

After working Kamoka pearl farm on Ahe Atoll, 3pm the crew get in a 14-foot boat and head into open ocean. This day we followed seabirds diving, meaning tuna pushing bait to the surface. Here's the catch back at the farm. That's Josh Humbert. These are people who know how to live where they live.

Here's a "love" theme Roseate wand pendant. It's cradled in a shell and laid out on the pearl farm dock on Ahe Atoll. There is a pink lab-grown diamond! The heart inlay is mother of pearl (the inside lining of an oyster shell). Note the tropical color it carries next to the bone-white shell.

Ahe Atoll is at the northern edge of the Tuamotu Archipelago. There are 78 islands, most of them uninhabited. The water temperature here is 84°F year round. You need a 3-hour flight from Tahiti and a 30-minute boat ride. The Kamoka pearl farm has been operating here for 30 years.

We have direct sourcing relationships with pearl farmers in French Polynesia, Western Australia, Japan, Fiji, and the Philippines. We sell a pure-sourcing backstory with each piece of jewelry. Here's our kid with us on a pearl farm trip to Ahe Atoll, French Polynesia. What a joy!

Influential 20th century Argentine writer Jorg Luis Borges was fascinated by patterns and infinity. He was particularly disturbed by the way mirrors multiply endlessly. The checkerboard in the Angela Cummings bracelet design does not end. The starfish is unconcerned. It has been through worse.

I just published a 2-minute read, "The Fool Hath Said There Is No God: Was King David Saying in Psalm 14 that Atheists Are Fools?. If you like it, please clap for it. Click & hold the applause button to fast-clap to the max of 50; it makes me very happy. medium.com/illumination...

"The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes." - André Gide. Angela Cummings, famous from Tiffany, designed this green-eyed walrus ring, pictured here on the coast of the Portuguese Algarve.

Together with modern navigation, the Portuguese developed the triangular sail so they could tack toward the wind and explore Africa, returning against the trade winds. One result: Here is Henrique Plaza, Lagos, Portugal, site of the first ever African slave auction.

The 1418 navigation school at Sagres, Portugal was the AI of its era. Before then, there was no navigation beyond what you could see in front of you. Maps were rumor and guesswork. The Vila do Infante gathered the best cartographers, astronomers, mathematicians, and sailors of the era.

Cape St. Vincent, Portugal, the end of Europe. A few miles from here in Sagres Prince Henry the Navigator launched the Age of Discovery by establiahing his famous School of Navigation in 1418. For centuries, navigation students believed the landmass in this image was the last land they'd ever see.

Here is a visual theme around frozen geometry, or perhaps a play on celestial navigation. This is an Angela Cummings design in sterling silver.

NYC has a secret only given up under duress. Give us a blizzard and the city you thought you knew disappears, replaced by something with goodwill and truly inspiring community joy. NYC becomes the "thin place" described in Celtic spirituality where the barrier between worlds becomes permeable.

Here's Pam Cloud, former Chief Merchandising Officer for Tiffany & Co., on a pearl sourcing trip. This is the Kamoka Pearl farm built out on a coral knoll in the lagoon of Ahe Atoll, French Polynesia. She's pointing at a black tipped reef shark circling around.

Here's another Angela Cummings design that I photographed Friday, the earrings set up on a Pinctada Maxima oyster shell from the Timor Sea. Angela deploys geometry as a declaration. Your move!

"There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath." — Melville, Moby-Dick. This Angela Cummings design seems to capture a tempest in the mother of pearl inlay. It is wearing the ocean on your hand.

Those who trade liberty for security have neither. — Benjamin Franklin

"Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable." - Kafka.

Every excuse quietly steals your future.

"You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly." - Sam Keen

A Valentine's Day gift? Here's the founder of Roseate recommending the Love Theme jeweled wand pendant, a personal amulet that gives back. 20% of the sale price (that's sale price, not profit) goes to the Billion Oyster Project, reintroducing oyster beds to New York harbor.

Golden pearls from the Philippines, are unusually big with bold, golden color that comes untinted or untreated from the oyster. The luster is more of an inner glow than a surface mirror.