The World of Mother of Pearl
Most of us are familiar with the Birmingham jewellery quarter without knowing that it was also the most important pearl working district in the Midlands and possibly the whole country. The pearly kings and queens of London bought their buttons from Birmingham and there were many hundreds of pearl workers there until the 1920s and 30s when the introduction of plastic buttons forced many small companies to close. The speaker at our March meeting, George Hook, is now the last remaining pearl worker in the whole of the Midlands. His business has been handed down through the family from John Hook, who was advertising as a pearl button maker in 1824.
George makes brooches, cuff-links, hair slides, knife handles, spoons and anything else to order. He has done special orders for fashion designers such as Jasper Conran and Amanda Wakeley and made pearl inlays for furniture designed by Lord Linley but because he can produce only small quantities he cannot earn huge sums of money. The trade is not suited to large scale production because small bench machinery can be used only in the initial stages of cutting, polishing and turning before decoration and finishing are done by hand. The work is labour intensive and requires patience. Young people are not attracted to it nowadays because job satisfaction is in exercising a skill rather than earning a good living.
Pearl is produced when shell fish and snails coat the inside of their shells with a secretion called nacre which George described as ‘a sort of spit’. They also coat any bits of grit or sand which get in their shells to stop them from becoming irritants and this produces pearls. The coating on the inside of the shell is called ‘Mother of Pearl’ to distinguish it from the pearls themselves. True pearl comes from oysters and the largest oysters in the world come from Australia so it was after Britain began importing oysters from Australia in the nineteenth century that pearl working developed – making larger items such as cutlery handles from the thicker mother of pearl rather than simply cutting out blanks for buttons or inlay from the thinner small shells previously used. George prefers not to use the largest shells as they often have worm holes and the quality of the pearl is not as good as in the medium sized shells which he favours, most of which he buys as by-products from the cultured pearl industry.
Pearls vary in colour according to the species of oyster such as the Tahitian oyster which produces black pearls, but the more richly coloured mother of pearl mostly comes from sea snails such as abalone and trochus. Mexican abalone is used for buttons, jewellery and inlay but the African sea snail which can weigh four or five kilograms is the most popular for heavier items such as card cases and opera glasses, while trochus shell is the cheapest source of mother of pearl used for most pearl buttons. The paua shell from New Zealand has a particularly vivid blue green iridescence and we were delighted when George produced examples of this and all the other beautiful shells for us to pass around and handle as he described them. He was an excellent and very amusing speaker who welcomed questions throughout his talk and afterwards we were able to examine some of the items he makes, including the egg spoon, yogurt spoon and caviar spoon which, George told us with a twinkle, were all the same spoon except for the price!
Before the talk our A.G.M. had taken place, recording another successful year crammed with activity. President Penny Bailey thanked all the committee members for their hard work and presented retiring member, Angela Pinfield, with a spring bulb arrangement in appreciation of her many services. Rachel Price gamely volunteered to replace her and was welcomed on to the committee after the formal voting procedures. Our next meeting is on 11th April when visitors will be very welcome to hear Malcolm Parker discuss legal matters in his talk, “Will you, won’t you?”. For further information please contact Penny Bailey on 01543 472756.