Majorica Pearls from Manacor in Mallorca

The success of the Manacor pearl from Mallorca dates back to 1897 in Barcelona, where a German named Friedrich Hugo Heusch, began to imitate nature in a small way.  Within a few years – 1902 – the demand from stores and jewellers in London, Berlin, Rome, and Paris was so great that he decided to open factories in Felanitx and Manacor in Mallorca. From then on, there was no stopping the marketing triumph of the Majorica brand name.

Up to 1948, the Heusch family and their 1,000 or more employees were protected from imitators by patents, but immediately after the monopoly ran out numerous other firms tried to muscle in. Few of them managed to survive as they were unable to undercut Majorica on price at the same time as keeping to the same quality.

Whereas with their cultured pearls the Japanese help the process along and implant a tiny particle in the culture shell so that the shellfish forms a mother-of-pearl coat round it, Majorica pearls are produced on the same principle but by quite different means.

A tiny artificial core toughened by high pressure is first fixed into a special mounting.  It is then dipped up to 30 times in a kind of mother-of-pearl paste, except that this does not consist of ground mother-of-pearl but all kinds of fauna particles from the sea such as fish scales and shell sand.  Each layer is heated so strongly with gas burners that the individual molecules of the sea mixture cluster together into larger molecules, a process call polymerisation.

This process not only guarantees perfect fusion, but also preserves the colour as well.  Black, and in recent fashions, grey and grey-blue, pearls get their colour from additives of coloured minerals.  Once all layers have been applied, the new pearls are carefully filed and polished.

The Majorica pearls feel like real pearls on the skin, cool but pleasant, and unlike cheap plastic pearls they warm to body temperature.  Neither make-up, perfume, heat nor cold affects them, and they are so hard that their shape is unalterable.

The Majorica pearls have 2 things in common with their natural colleagues; firstly they are not cheap [although cheaper than what the pearl oyster produces] which is not suprising given the lengthy process involved – much of it done by hand.  Secondly, you cannot give either pearls or Majoricas as a present, because it brings as many years of bad luck as the piece of jewellery has pearls.   However, if somebody comes along with a jewel case don’t panic – a token payment of a few cents breaks the spell.