Pearl by Pearl, She Built a Jewelry Career

LONDON — In advance of her successful, if considerably niche, job, the Hungarian-born pearl stringer Renata Terjeki was under no circumstances a admirer of pearls.

“I under no circumstances wanted to string,” explained Ms. Terjeki, 47, in a the latest video clip job interview from her smaller, windowless, lamp-lit workshop, tucked in the basement of the luxury antique jeweler Bentley & Skinner on London’s bustling Piccadilly.

To her thoughts, pearl necklaces have been the protect of men and women over 80, and stringing was an straightforward pursuit: “I assumed all they do is just chuck the pearls on a string, tie it by some means, and that is it,” she reported.

These days, Ms. Terjeki is entrusted with some of the world’s most exquisite pearl jewelry, to be restrung, fixed and often redesigned.

Discretion “is an unspoken rule in the trade,” reported Ms. Terjeki, who is often demanded to sign confidentiality agreements when functioning on large-end items. But customers she can name incorporate the auction residences Bonhams and Sotheby’s, and the jewelry emporiums Moussaieff and Bentley & Skinner. Private shoppers have incorporated a daughter of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, (for whom she strung a prayer-bead-like gold and pearl necklace one Xmas), and European royalty.

Virtually all find her via word of mouth.

In 2015, Ms. Terjeki, opened an Instagram account below the moniker @stringing_alongside. She desired to accurate the misconceptions all-around pearl stringing that she herself had harbored. Amid the functions on display there are woven pearl watch straps, black diamond loafer tassels, gemstone curtain ornaments and an antique Cartier bag covered in small pearls.

Opposite to what just one may possibly expect, valuable and semiprecious stone beads, and often even coral, make up an estimated 35 to 40 percent of Ms. Terjeki’s operate, she said. (“It’s the exact method,” she said. “Just a distinctive substance.”) And even ribbon is portion of her repertoire. It is ordinarily a pearl stringer’s occupation to wind velvet, hair-colored ribbons about the frames of some tiaras, she reported.

To day, her Instagram feed has extra than 17,000 followers, some no doubt drawn by the profession’s strange mother nature: Pro pearl stringers are difficult to appear by.

“She is just one of a dwindling range of impartial practitioners maintaining alive this useful ability,” reported Emily Barber, director of jewelry at Bonhams United kingdom — an auction residence that has labored with Ms. Terjeki for 12 a long time. (“Renata is the doyenne of pearl stringers,” she said.)

Ms. Terjeki estimates there are only a handful of significant-level pearl stringers left in London.

This shortage is most likely the outcome of a change away from the typical carrying of high-priced, normal pearls, mentioned Kristian Spofforth, head of office, Sotheby’s jewellery, London. In the early 20th century, when organic pearls were at their peak, “it’s a thing you got carried out frequently,” he reported. In this day and age, he reported, a lot more folks are donning cultured pearls or significantly less valuable pearls.

“Perfecting it and performing it nicely is remarkably difficult,” he explained of the do the job.

Ms. Terjeki arrived upon the job by chance, when a veteran stringer available her an apprenticeship, and in component credits her results to her history as a goldsmith.

In Budapest, she studied underneath a grasp goldsmith, Rezso Ludvig, an artist effectively recognised within just Hungarian jewellery circles for restoring the Hungarian crown jewels, she reported. His insistence that all college students discover to craft every thing by hand employing only the most standard tools can be found in her operate now.

Though professional equipment exist, her possess are simple. And, other than for her drill and model, all in good shape into a wood box she carries with her when the worth of a piece signifies she’s expected to string in other places.

Between the several goods organized within, claimed Ms. Terjeki, can be located a “gimp” — a little coil of steel that helps prevent the pearl from rubbing against the clasp, a .23-millimeter needle — the slimmest out there — for threading, and a area of a purple cotton table runner brought from a housewares retail store. (The shade will allow her to see the pearls evidently, and the fabric “has minimal grooves, which stops the pearls rolling,” she reported.) Knots are tied with an “ordinary” needle that slots into a rounded wood take care of, she mentioned. And as for her thread, even though some use silk, Ms. Terjeki favors nylon: As opposed to silk, nylon “is resilient, so the knot stays awesome and neat,” she stated.

Though she declined to give a foundation rate since of the quite a few variables (principally irrespective of whether the shopper is trade or private, the benefit of the piece and the time it will acquire), her function ranges greatly in value and complexity.

At a person stop of the scale are single-row necklaces. At the other are plaited sautoirs — the French name for extended necklaces fashioned of woven ropes of pearls with wires crisscrossing inside of that generally culminate in one or much more tassels. As the work can need up to 10 several hours a day of full focus for three months to a month, she said, the charge can rise to a several thousand pounds.

In addition to its intricacy, the time put in on a sautoir can count on the size of its pearls.

“Sometimes the pearl hole, and the pearl itself, is so little even my thinnest needle won’t go via,” Ms. Terjeki explained.

Her option: Break up the nylon thread into its part strands and, using the slimmest, harden it with a minuscule dab of potent glue and slide it by way of the pearls like a needle. Which is why she is nearsighted, she mentioned. “I don’t have to have eyeglasses for perform, but I do require glasses for driving, observing a movie, because I stare at all the things so shut all day lengthy.”

Time constraints and the value of a piece can add to the sometime significant-stress nature of her career, reported Ms. Terjeki, who was as soon as necessary to full a five-row purely natural pearl necklace really worth in excess of £1 million in only two hours even though seated beside a bodyguard in the SSEF pearl lab in Zurich.

“With a 17th-century necklace, I just can’t just go and get one more 1,” she said.

But this gives the work its appeal.

“I like troubles,” explained Ms. Terjeki, whose maxim is “nothing is impossible” and who has no ideas to retire.

Nowadays, pearl stringing is her passion, she explained. “I don’t know if I could reside without having it.”