“Tokyo, April 2026. During a brief stay in Japan, I visited A&S Aoyama.
Ahead of the annual trunk show at A&S Aoyama, which I have come to look forward to each year, I received a request from the buying team to create jewelry using keshi pearls. After returning to England, I immediately began working on the pieces.
From my collection of keshi pearls, gathered over many years, I selected those with particularly distinctive character for this collection created for A&S.
Among them, black Tahitian keshi pearls possess a free individuality, untouched by trends or conventional ideas of beauty, with a character and expression all their own.
Known as a product of chance, keshi pearls are not created by human hands. Rather, they are formed over many years as layers of nacre build around foreign matter, such as grains of sand that happen to find their way inside a shell in the sea. Their unique shapes and colors are their defining qualities, and depending on the viewer, they may appear in various forms—such as insects, fish, or animals.
Previously, one of the staff members commissioned a pearl necklace for personal use featuring pearls that appeared like beetles.
Working in harmony with the free forms of the keshi pearls, I create each metal component individually. Compared with perfectly round pearls, their irregular shapes often require repeated subtle adjustments, and they are not always an easy material to work with.
When creating a piece by bringing together the hardness of metal and the free forms of keshi pearls, I sometimes feel the materials pushing back against each other. Feeling the interaction between metal and pearl through my hands, I gradually move closer to the form I wish to create, removing what is unnecessary and shaping the piece along the way.
There are moments when the process does not progress as I had hoped and I find myself at a loss. Yet there are also times when a completed piece reveals a beauty beyond anything I imagined. To encounter these moments, I make a point of seeking out each material myself, one by one. I believe that pearls which are not perfectly round possess a certain strength precisely because they remain unfinished.
The journey of a piece toward a state of unfinished completion. I enjoy the process itself as I create each work. This summer, I hope that A&S customers will also encounter a keshi pearl that becomes a treasured favorite.”
－ Mariko Tsuchiyama
