MAKISIMA LIBRARY

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Private Introduction of MAKISIMA
---Between Inside and Outside. (3)

Is the Shape of Freshwater Pearl Strange?

Q: "This pearl isn't sphere, is it?"

Freshwater pearl is made by ikechou-gai (that is the name of shellfish like unionid: hyriopsis schlegelii; sinohyriopsis schleglii ). Freshwater pearl is coreless pearl, all pearl in a sense. There are some sphere pearl, but many freshwater pearls are baroque, that is smoothly curved arbitrary shape. Freshwater pearls produced in Lake Biwa in Shiga-pref. or in Lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki-pref. are famouse. You may image pearl as sphere, but a cultured pearl in the sea is sphere, because it is made by putting a sphere core in the shellfish.

The design with straight lines may be fit for sphere pearl, because the real sphere is a numerically expressed curved surface. But freshwater pearl has various forms, and the shape is natural and made up of various curved surface. MAKISIMA's jewelry is soft and natural design fit to freshwater pearls. Casting is outsourcing now, but they casted at the workshop in our home because the design is too complex for others to product.

So, I understand.

tiepin

You can watch it from many points of view with Quick Time Virtual Reality object model ( QTVR ) tiepin ( QTVR object ) ( 615 KB ).

Note: "baroque"

the origin of a word "baroque" is "irregularly shaped pearls".

MAKISIMA ( http://www.makisima.com/ )

Note: "MAKISIMA" here means my parents' company, MAKISIMA, and their work.

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