About a century ago, Paris was obsessed with pearls from the Gulf. Couture houses, famous jewellery designers, artists and, of course, wealthy customers were caught up in a frenzy that would be called “pearlmania”.
Why did this happen? The answer is a change in the way Gulf pearls reached the shores of Europe. For much of the 19th century, merchants from Abu Dhabi to Bahrain had sold their bounty to India.
Because Gulf exports were governed by exclusive treaties with Britain and India, part of its empire, this created a near monopoly. The best pearls went to London, leaving only the overpriced scraps for everyone else.
But by 1904, Britain was in recession, caused by the expense of fighting the Boer War. Prices for pearls slumped and threatened the livelihood of thousands, from divers to the crews of the huge sambuk sailing dhows, merchants and dealers.
An unlikely hero
Salvation came in the shape of a man called Leonard Rosenthal. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1874 in what is now the Russian republic of Dagestan, he fled conscription to the Tsar’s army and arrived in Paris at the age of 14.
Rosenthal began trading in pearls, and eventually secured almost all the supply from the Arabian Gulf after travelling there in 1906 and offering to cut out the middlemen. He also became hugely wealthy, thanks to a glut of diamonds produced by the mines of South Africa.
The best pearls suddenly became as precious as diamonds, and much in demand with fashionable and wealthy Europeans. Paris became the centre of a luxury industry, with around 300 dealers operating from the Rue La Fayette in the heart of the city.
This was the time known as the Belle Epoque, with France at the heart of a flourishing of the arts that lasted until the start of the First World War in 1914.
Pearls, prized for their whiteness and luminescence, became the focus of the fashion industry. Fabulous necklaces and earrings, often pairing both pearls and diamonds, were produced for the aristocracy by leading jewellers like Frederic Boucheron, Van Cleef & Arpels and the designer Rene Lalique.
A trend for the history books
The artist George Barbier became famous for his work, featuring fashion plates of stylish women, often dressed in pearls, and became part of a group of like-minded illustrators known as “the knights of the bracelet”.
By 1915, Rosenthal’s workshops were producing 100 necklaces a day, while Gulf pearls were stitched into couture from the great fashion houses of the age.
It also seemed too good to last, and the end came not long after the peak in 1925. A combination of the Great Depression in 1929 and the invention of artificial cultivated pearls caused the Gulf market to collapse, throwing thousands out of work and causing poverty and hardship in the region that would endure until the discovery of oil in the 1950s.
As for Rosenthal, after his brother was shot dead by the Gestapo in 1941, he fled occupied Paris for neutral Spain, eventually reaching New York where he resumed trading – this time with cultivated pearls. He died 70 years ago, in 1955.
Memories of “pearlmania” have been revived this year by an exhibition, Paris, City of Pearls, at the city’s school of jewellery arts, L’Ecole, which runs until June and features several spectacular pieces along with memorabilia from the period.
Meanwhile there has been a revival of Gulf pearls in Bahrain, where diving has once more become a profitable occupation, and Ras Al Khaimah, where Abdulla Al Suwaidi, the grandson of a pearl diver, has established the House of Pearls, a farm that aims to produce 40,000 pearls a year.
