We’ve added more designer items to our repertoire, including many of Carlos Cabral’s unique Silver designs. In case you have never worn or used 0.950 Silver (“regular” or traditional silver is graded at 0.925, being very good silver), let me tell you the difference: it feels different. It may be difficult to describe but this silver feels more sturdy, more dense…to me it feels a bit like steel. For you, what this really means is that your Silver is PURER…cleaner, the variety of Silver that has got to be Guaranteed to kill werewolves/lycans and other varieties of things that go bump in the night.
Joking aside, you may not have use for a werewolf killing piece of jewelry but you do want purer silver simply because it looks nicer, feels better and lasts longer without any cleaning. As we all know, ALL silver tarnishes due to environmental substances that interact with this precious metal, but better Silver will tarnish less often. Another interesting fact regarding Silver: “new Silver” (fresh off the mine…in a manner of speaking) is usually processed in a way that most impurities are eliminated, whereas “old Silver” (Silver pieces that are produced using old silver items, including silverware & jewelry) will usually contain high amounts of impurities that will cause the item to tarnish faster or develop small blackened “pores”. We are happy to say that all of our silver jewelry is always made with new silver.
Carlos Cabral
Carlos Cabral is one of my favorite designers simply because his pieces are never identical, they surprise you all the time with little details that are almost “organic”, and being a biologist…well, I just enjoy the flowing designs and the volcanic details. Our pearls add an incredible color to an already original & beautiful piece, and the result is what I would describe as stunning and provocative. Carlos ALWAYS uses 0.950 Silver.
Priscila Canales
Another all-time favorite designer we have is Priscila Canales. She has worked with us since the start of this Century and her items have always earned the love and affection of our customers (and ourselves!). Her jewelry is very zoomorphic…animals are her thing! And there are few things as beautiful as a small sea-turtle and mabe pearl pendant, or as elegant as her “Dragonfly” brooch/pendant combo. Feast on her designs, all Nature lovers!
Juan R. Pacheco
Our friend Juan is considered by many to be the best jeweler designer in our hometown of Guaymas, Sonora. He never, ever, repeats the same design and will only work with fine 14K Gold. His designs have a tendency towards geometry and arcane-pagan symbolism, but following the “less is more” school of design. His designs are sure to cause an impression both due their design and the incredible color of the pearl.
Kathe Mai
There are many ways to describe Kathe’s jewelry (sold under the TriGem Designs brand): classic, elegant yet for everyday use, beautiful…but I would have to add the “more bang for your buck” line here as well. You basically get a lot of good quality solid gold (18K for yellow, 14K for rosé), and all the precious stones used -emeralds, rubies, diamonds, opals and of course: the pearls!- are always Fair Trade Gems so you can enjoy your jewelry and feel good about the whole thing! No more “spasmodic” (the word is there intentionally) looks at that ring that you have and you start to feel like you’ve helped to finance a terrorist group on the other side of the world.
Alejandra
Alejandra is one of the most talented designers we’ve seen as of lately: artistic, innovative and playful in her designs. Alejandra is all about quality work and all about fun & color: she fuses different colored gold -yellow, white, green, rosé- with every conceivable precious stone you’ve seen: citrine, diamond, ruby, emerald, opal and pearl. She chooses the colors of these stones in order to obtain the most visually playful jewelry we’ve seen and we believe many others agree…she’s been making her way up the designing ladder since she became an independent jewelry designer.
X-Mas Promotion 2010
We hope you have enjoyed this small review of some of the people that help produce our one-of-a-kind jewelry, always with beautiful, naturally colored Sea of Cortez Pearls.
If you have the time then browse around our Guaymas based store (or even our e-store) to look at the new additions we have during this Holiday Season. While there, do take advantage of our Special 20% Discount for this Holiday Season (ends December 26th) by using the following Promotional Coupon: XMAS2010
This is our way of thanking you all for your continued support: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from all of us here at Perlas del Mar de Cortez.
That’s right, we have already published on the web -thanks to YouTube- our Original video on “Sea of Cortez Pearls.” This was a project we had in mind for several years, but we never had the time to invest in an “original production”. The video reached a good compromise between what we wanted to play on the video, yet we could not achieve such as: we wanted a video clip of a hurricane in action on the pearl farm … but when this happens one usually take refuge, or we wanted ”special clothing” (we could not shoot a troop of “Spanish Conquistadores” trudging through the desert) and, we have not been able of finding a professional narrator (primarily due to time constraints) for the Spanish version of the video… but the English version has superb narration.
Despite being produced in 2008 (it achieved “Gold” status on December of that year) we had the video available only on DVD throughout 2009, and it was until this year that we decided to share it publicly. The video is presented in two parts due to time constraints imposed by YouTube. The first part is a presentation of the Gulf of California Pearl:its lore and History; the second part deals with the commercial cultivation of pearls in Guaymas, Sonora. So, with no more hesitation: we hope you enjoy the video…
UPDATE (APRIL 2011): Well, YouTube has increased the time limits on videos to 15 minutes and now offers HD… so, I have been able to update the video and now you only have to click on it to watch the full version (13 minutes) in Hi-Def. Hope you like it!
We thank all those who participated directly in this beautiful project, specially the staff at “Cheque’s Films”: our good friends Ezekiel “el Cheque” Núñez and Esteban Ibarra (who were in charge of cameras and video editing); the original “Perlas del Mar de Cortez Soundtrack” was the work of Jaime Delgado Avelar, the excellent voice narration by the professional narrator Charlie Bloomer, and photos taken by yet another good friend, Alberto “el Gordo” Tirado. Another couple of good video details provided by our friend Benito Sarmiento (thank you for allowing us to use your videocam and “underwater casing” as well as for lending us your aerial video of Bacochibampo Bay), and finally, the great 3-D work of the “Spanish Galleon” done by Abraham Castro of “Onix” fame. In all, this video was fully made in Guaymas, Sonora.
The script for the video was produced by us (“pearl trio”), in addition to some video footage and photos that we did and incorporated into it.
Additional thanks? Sure! There are many people who we would like to give special thanks, and amongst them we have:
“The Yaqui Diver”/Adrian Amarillas Casillas, our friends Rocio Mendoza and Diana Alvarez, as well as to Karla Valdez, Sergio Farell -our friend and former mentor- the “Tec de Monterrey” for showing faith in our school project and, of course, our group of “Yaqui Workers” led by Jesus “el Pipi” Valenzuela.
I invite you to please leave your comments … I know that in order to leave a comment you are required to use an e-mail account, but for those who do not want to leave a comment because you will “need” to use your e-mail, you can do the following: there is no need to enter a real email … instead use this fake e-mail chachalaca@chachalaca.com.mx (“copy & paste” and place in the appropriate field) and you will see that it is not necessary to use your personal mail.
See you next week!