Pearl buyer J.R. Sink went up and down the White and Black rivers in the 1920s and ’30s, swapping cash for fresh-water pearls.
Those who visit Pearls Unique in Newport can buy some of those very pearls today. Few of the pearls for sale at the store are from modern mussel harvesters. This year, only one pearl was brought to the store by a mussel divers.
The business is known the world over.
“We’ve had people here from Japan, Australia ... We had a group from France,” pearl grading specialist Phyllis Holmes said.
“We’re the only one in Arkansas selling natural fresh-water pearls,” she said, adding that she’s aware of only one other business in the U.S. that does so. It’s in Tennessee.
“I had never seen a natural pearl until 1986,” Holmes said. The first she saw that year were among some that land developer Bill Pratt had lent money on. She told him then, “If you ever get into the pearl business, I want to be involved.”
Three years later, Sink, then about 94, called Pratt about buying his pearl collection.
“He was actually the last pearl buyer to go up and down the rivers buying pearls,” Holmes said.
What Pratt and his staff saw was stunning.
“He had thousands of pearls. He had them in cigar boxes and Prince Albert (tobacco) cans. He had them in (dresser) drawers and all kinds of things,” Holmes said. “Bill’s daughter, Jan Coe, and I weighed all the pearls — they sell by the grain. It took us three days.”
“We purchased them and put them in the bank.”
The pearls were of many different types, shapes, sizes and colors, including pink, lavender, gold or yellow, peach, greenish and black. Any dark pearl is identified as black, even if it is a dark shade of another color, like green, she said.
One was even navy blue. “I’ve always regretted selling it ever since. I’ve looked and looked and have never found another one. It’s like one of my lost children that won’t come to me,” Holmes said.
But, with all those pearls in hand, it was time for an education. Holmes contacted the Gemological Institute in San Diego which, fortunately, had scheduled an upcoming class in Memphis. “Jan and I took a pearl-grading course,” she recalled.
They also studied under a pearl specialist in Austin, Texas, before taking some of the pearls to gem and jewelry shows at Dallas, Memphis, Tulsa and other big cities.
“We were the hit of the shows. We were the entertainment. Everybody came to our booth to see our pearls,” Holmes said.
“The pearl business, it’s an interesting story.”
The Black and White river pearl boom began in the spring of 1897, when former Newport physician J.H. Myers, who had moved to Black Rock, recalled reading about valuable pearls being found in fresh-water mussels. Myers began opening mussels about two miles above Black Rock, according to Sallie W. Stockard’s 1904 book, “The History of Lawrence, Jackson, Independence and Stone Counties of the Third Judicial District of Arkansas.”
“Myers had opened a few hundred muckets (a type of mussel) when a ball pearl, weighing 14 grams, fine luster and pinkish color, was found,” Stockard wrote.
When the news broke, Holmes said farmers, businessmen — even bankers — flocked to the rivers to harvest mussels, looking for pearls. “Everyone just went out there. Whole families went” and camped out on the river banks, hunting for pearls, she said.
One of the pearls found in those days is said to have been used in the crown jewels of England and, Holmes said, “I believe that is a documented story. That’s where they sold most of the pearls in the old days — England and France.”
“Schoolchildren, they don’t know ... the history. I used to go and give programs to the school kids.” Now, due to student testing required by education officials, teachers do not have the time to schedule such history-oriented programs, Holmes said.
Byproducts of the pearl boom were button factories and hog feed. The feed consisted of the meat boiled from the mussel shells; the boiling cleaned the shells for the button making process and the finding of pearls.
On her wall at Pearls Unique, Holmes has a 1923 photo of the Newport button factory.
Newport, Batesville, Akron (near Newark) and Black Rock all had button factories, as did other communities along the rivers.
Plastic buttons put the mussel-shell button factories out of business by the end of World War II.
Prospective customers at Pearls Unique can select from pearl rings, pearl strands and necklaces, broaches or, if they make an appointment, lose pearls which they can purchase and take to the goldsmith of their choice.
Natural pearls are pearls all the way through and may be any shape, and are grown without any help from man. Cultured pearls are round and are only the thickness of a thumbnail grown over a bead which has been inserted into a mussel or oyster by man, Holmes said.
“The Japanese have done a good job of marketing” to make people believe that pearls should be round, but cultured pearls are not natural pearls, she said. A natural pearl grows in a mussel or oyster when a grain of sand or other irritant gets inside its shell and the animal coats it with mother-of-pearl.
The longer you wear a pearl, the more lustrous it looks, Holmes said, adding, “They go with anything from formal wear to blue jeans.”
The store is usually open from 9 a.m. until noon and 1 to 4 p.m. on weekdays. However, sometimes Holmes has to be out for a while due to an illness in her family, so anyone coming from a distance should call ahead.