For centuries Native Americans treasured quahog shells, the purplish hard coverings of clams found along North Atlantic shores, which they fashioned into beads called wampum to adorn ceremonial garments and, later, to use as currency.
Today, however, quahogs are primarily a food source, often found in clam chowders, and their shells are discarded.
Melanie Georgacopoulos, a jewelry designer known for her unconventional use of pearls and shells, had never even heard of quahogs before she began work on her new Katina collection.
“When I saw them, I fell in love with the shells,” said Ms. Georgacopoulos, who was born in Greece and now works in London and Hamburg, Germany. “At first, I was drawn to its beautiful purple color, but after researching, I realized it has a significant history and carries a people’s culture.”
She learned about them when Brendan Breen, an entrepreneur in Boston who has had a lifelong fascination with quahogs, asked if she wanted to buy some shells.
As a teenager in Duxbury, Mass., along the Atlantic, Mr. Breen harvested quahogs by hand and sold them to local seafood wholesalers. Then in college, studying aquaculture, he patented a method of preparing quahogs to produce cultured pearls. In 2016, after graduation, he established Mercenaria Pearl, a company in Boston that sells a modest number of quahog pearls (they are not easy to cultivate, he said) and his shell jewelry designs.
One reason quahog shell jewelry is not common, Mr. Breen said, is that the shell is hard to manipulate: “Since it is sensitive to heat and vibration, and shells often contain natural fractures, it can be a challenge to find an unblemished piece that can handle transformation without cracking.”
That didn’t stop Ms. Georgacopoulos, who has devised unusual ways of working with pearls and shells, such as creating small cubes of abalone shell to hang from earrings and pendants, slicing pearls to reveal their inner striations and sculpting mother-of-pearl to resemble an emerald-cut gem.
Given the shells’ history, Ms. Georgacopoulos said that she wanted to use them in designs with meaning, and that she was inspired by a silver Byzantine-style chain that belonged to her Great-Aunt Katina Roussou. “When my great-aunt fled Smyrna’s historic fire in 1922, the necklace was one of the few things she took,” said the designer, referring to the city that is now known as Izmir, Turkey. “It was a painful chapter in our family’s history.”
She recreated the intricate necklace by weaving together loops of onyx and strands of quahog beads and made versions with white mother-of-pearl loops, freshwater pearls and yellow gold. The Katina collection, which also includes bracelets and earrings, sells for $550 to $18,500.
Like Mr. Breen, Ms. Georgacopoulos has been captivated by pearls and their shells. She began working with them while pursuing a master’s degree in jewelry at the Royal College of Art in London. In 2010, she established her namesake pearl brand because, she said recently, “I felt there wasn’t anything interesting in contemporary pearl designs.”
In 2012, her designs caught the attention of the Japanese pearl company Tasaki, and she began designing the M/G Tasaki collection. “I’m still discovering new ways to use pearls,” she said.
As for Mr. Breen, he has continued to work on culturing quahog pearls and experimenting with the shells. “As you work with a piece of quahog shell, the flat gray, chalky exterior is removed to reveal a hard, smooth surface with brilliant white and purple striations,” he said. “Each has its own original character.”
But don’t expect to find a pearl inside these shells. Only about one in a million quahog shells produce pearls, he says, and of those, few are gem quality.
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