The Divers Behind the Pearls
Before the cultured pearl there were the ama, the divers, overwhelmingly women, who freedove for oysters. Mikimoto's industry was built on their labour, and photographed by agencies like Agence Rol in its early years.
The Japanese pearl industry, before and after Mikimoto, depended on divers. The ama, traditionally women, freedove for abalone, seaweed and pearl oysters, holding their breath for minutes at a time in cold water. When Mikimoto built his cultured pearl enterprise, it was the divers who tended the oyster beds, placed and retrieved the shells, and supplied the raw material of the whole business.
Every strand of cultured pearls represents thousands of dives. The luxury is real. So is the work.
Early twentieth-century photographs, including those taken by the French agency Agence Rol, show the oyster culture operations of Mikimoto's time: rafts, baskets and workers handling the shells from which the industry grew. The images are a reminder that the pearl, for all its associations with elegance, began as manual labour in cold water.
The labour behind luxury
Jewellery writing prefers the finished object to the labour that made it. The pearl divers are the corrective: every strand of cultured pearls represents thousands of dives, thousands of oysters opened, thousands of nuclei grafted by hand. The luxury is real. So is the work.
The ama tradition continues in parts of Japan today, though the economics that sustained it have changed beyond recognition. What remains is the technique, the knowledge of the water, and the photographs: women in white headscarves, baskets of oysters, the unglamorous beginning of a glamorous trade.
