We call on family friends for most of our "on model" images to show how worn jewelry displays. For serious promotional stuff we hire models. The first 2 hours of a shooting day is hair and makeup! I took this with my phone, the photographer adjusting a mixed Tahitian black pearl strand.

This lab grown diamond is rose cut: flat base, domed top, triangular facets radiating outward from a central point like an unfolding rose. The cut dates from 16th century India - limited light and cutting tools. Rose cut means less waste and softer, more diffuse and romantic light return.

Tulips were once worth more than houses. Pearls went through something similar. These are baroque pearls, each individually shaped, not round. These are the pearls that didn't follow the rules. Each is as individual as a fingerprint. Baroque used to be at the bottom of the pearl pricing echelon.

This is the bungalow where I stayed to visit the pearl farm on Ahe Atoll. A compost toilet is under the raised structure. Adjacent is the "shower", a green hose connected to a cistern filled with rainwater. The night before out of nowhere there was a crazy storm that blew off the mosquito net.

Dragon fruit and Tahitian pearls share implausible natural coloration. As if nature put the practical color guide aside. And so exotic: dragon is a fruit from a cactus in the desert, blooming only at night. The pearl is from an oyster in a Pacific lagoon, growing layer by layer in undersea darkness.

"Me want… pearl studs."

Here's Pam on a pearl farm visit to Ahe Atoll (pop. 550). One cannot quite process the vibrant scene. The only village, Tenukupara, has a nurse and a small sundries store, open by appointment. Eggs and staples are silly cheap, but no flour. Beer is dear (a crate of local Hinano is 80 euros).

Only one place on Earth produces these golden pearls: the Palawan Corridor in the Philippines. The gold lip oyster deposits pigmentation layer by layer, creating a pearl over two or three years. You can't create this color depth artificially. It either grows that way or it doesn't.

Some photographs make themselves and we are interested bystanders. I put a brain coral in a cutting board and shot this bracelet with my phone. The pink bead in the bracelet is a ruby mined in Greenland.

Astral projection. The pearl comes from the Sulu Sea between the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulawesi. The oysters there produce pearls with a golden color because of the specific plankton, the water chemistry, and the latitude.

Here's Pam Cloud, ex-Tiffany Roseate founder, with second-generation pearl farmer, George Kakuda, in Ise, Japan. The Kakuda website is at kakudapearl.jp/english/ and features this tag line: "Delivering joy and happiness to all". In this day and age? And consider his word choice - "Delivering".

Did jewelry lose its confidence? This Angela Cummings designed bangle isn't asking for permission.

A message arrived this week from a South Pacific pearl farm (a fantastic notion!). Here's what it says: "Lot 8, oval/drop shapes, high luster, 8mm, 20 pieces. Lot 10, round/semi-round, high luster, 9mm, 6 pieces." This is how pearls are graded and sorted at the source.

A lab created diamond like this one is composed of crystallized carbon. It's atomically, optically, structurally identical to a mined diamond. But we know exactly where the lab stone comes from. And the price is stunning. A diamond is a diamond. It's the mine that you've been paying for.

George Bailey promised in "It's a Wonderful Life" that he would lasso the moon. That's what this image brings to mind. This is a South Sea pearl from the Timor Sea. It is the largest oyster species on earth with shells weighing 5 kg and as big as salad plates.

This is a busy season in jewelry: Mother's Day, graduations, weddings. Normally, we push the jewelry forward in images, highlighting whatever design or material beauty the light finds. But the grace of wedding themes almost always makes jewelry an accent, an enhancer.

Here's a pearl strand that comes from three different oceans. There's a big white South Sea pearl from the Timor Sea, a golden pearl from the Philippines, and a collection of black Tahitian pearls. Black isn't black, it's peacock, bronze, silver-green. Gold is honey, champagne, sunrise.

Here's our bloom-theme pendant wand in 925 sterling silver (92.5% pure). It's photographed with a ranunculus and a matching red lanyard. The Bloom wand is for those who lead with open-heartedness: petals at the crown, a heart at the root. It's an amulet for people who can't help but open.

This was photographed the same day as the picture of Josh Humbert from the last post, on the pearl farm dock with blazing tropical colors. These are jewelled pendant wands, modern symbols of intention, amulets, channellers of traits and personal power. What fun for designers!

This is Josh Humbert, second-generation Polynesian pearl farmer and our main source for black Tahitian pearls. There is a dare in Josh's soul. He loves the airless thrill of diving at the fringe of society, solar power, fishing, gardening, rainwater stored in cisterns, supply tender twice a month.

These are Angela Cummings designed cufflinks. Three components and a visual riddle: Black onyx for depth, mother of pearl for light, yellow gold to provide boundary. Geometrics slight of hand.

Ahe Atoll is a ring of coral in the Tuamotu Archipelago, home to one of the world's most respected sustainable pearl farms, Kamoka, run by Josh Humbert and his family. The lagoon dictates everything: harvest timing, pearl quality, the health of the reef. Here is a WaterDrop design pendant.

An elegant Angela Cummings design.

Against a block of selenite with its geological neutrality, the color warmth of this mixed Tahitian strand shows. The bronze and champagne pearls in the background read differently here than in pictures with the lily like the last post.

What colors do you catch? Petrol blue. Peacock green. Plum shadow. A glint of raven's wing. Oxidized copper. And some shade of gold, not warm gold, but a Rembrandt gold out of an old oil painting. Neither the lily nor the multicolor Tahitian black pearl strand make any apology for their color.

Not all locks need keys. This is the LoveLock design with an obvious padlock inspiration. This is a grey Tahitian pearl with a shackle designed from two ecological water droplets arching to join.

Photoshoot for some on-model depictions. These allow online customers to see how an item presents. I like this shot. She's not looking at the necklace. She already knows it's going to be fun to wear. Lab-grown diamond pendant.

Stand and be counted!

Dragon fruit grow from a cactus and only blossom at night. Cut a dragon fruit in half and you get a mandala, a geometric design that represents the universe. A scatter plot. A galaxy too far away to name the stars. But add two blossom earrings in the middle and you have eyes, and we can see you!

Yayoi Kusama said the dot represents infinity, the self dissolving into pattern, and pattern dissolving into everything. That's a heavy claim for a circle. Are we dots in a larger canvas? Consider that in nature spots can be a warning or an invitation. It depends on the animal.

Pam sets up a pop-up event at Salima Optique in SoHo, NYC.

Pam worked with Elsa Peretti. A former '60s fashion model, Elsa spent her career exploring the possibilities of what jewelry looks like when you remove everything that isn't necessary. Here's our water droplet design frozen at the moment of maximum surface tension before the droplet snaps away.

Pam Cloud at Kamoka Pearl Farm, French Polynesia, pointing at reef sharks. You cross from that atoll ring to the farm via that rickety foot bridge. The reef sharks circle for scraps.

Almost always, our hearts hold something back. The gold disagrees. 心はたいてい、何かを内に秘めている。ゴールドは、そう思わない。

The seahorse is so exotic! The males get pregnant. They swim vertically. It's a fish with a prehensile tail like a monkey! This is one of the Angela Cummings designs, the famed former Tiffany designer. With customers it's a love-hate thing: People are mystified by seahorses or they look away.

I have to shoot a bunch of angles to get the best reflection: a green-to-rose shift that reads almost geological. This is mother of pearl, cut from the inside of an oyster shell. We see light bouncing between microscopic aragonite platelets at wavelengths that shift with the viewing angle.

Tahitian pearls are famous for their range: peacock, aubergine, silver-green. In a shot like this the colors answer each other.

We get these baroque South Sea pearls from the Timor Sea, between northwest Australia and Timor-Leste: remote, warm, and little known outside the pearl world. We're trained from 20th century marketing to expect perfectly round. These are ridged, no two alike. Oyster nacre follows its own logic.

Here's the pearl farm on Ahe Atoll, French Polynesia. This is our primary source for black Tahitian pearls. If you look closely you can see Pam Cloud and a black dress coming toward me with a cup of coffee. Pam spent 25 years at Tiffany as their chief merchandising officer before starting Roseate.

The five-pointed star shows in Islamic architecture, East Asian family crests, and the mathematics of the golden ratio. The Angela Cummings star belongs to no single culture and every culture simultaneously.

Inside a floral explosion is our water theme pendant wand. The design speaks to the fluid grace and serene endurance of life's most essential element, with power both yielding and persisting.

Working the pearl farm at Ahe Atoll, French Polynesia. Those sleeves surround the oysters suspended in the lagoon. Along with indigenous fish that peck off the pests, these sleeves protect oysters from shell-boring parasites.

We imagine seasonal themes months ahead for photographs to show Roseate jewelry. We are thinking ahead to high summer, but the process makes us appreciate the spring we are inside now. The rough give of citrus peel. The cool snap of silver. Some things are made to be handled before they're admired.

Angela Cummings design stars in a springtime matchup for attention with an April tulip.

Love and Water themed jeweled pendants made from lab grown diamonds and mother of pearl inset.

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)