What Are Baroque Pearls?

A baroque pearl is one with an irregular shape. The word describes the shape, not a kind of pearl, so a baroque pearl can be a natural pearl or a cultured pearl of any type.¹

What makes a pearl baroque#

CIBJO, the international jewelry confederation, defines a baroque pearl as an irregularly shaped natural or cultured pearl, and notes that baroque was originally a French adjective for objects or pearls that were not symmetrical.¹

Baroque is one of eight basic shapes that GIA lists: round, semi-round, button, drop, pear, oval, baroque and circled.² CIBJO divides pearl shapes more broadly, into round, near-round, oval, button, drop and baroque.¹ Some classifications add a step before baroque: the one for Japanese Akoya cultured pearls in CIBJO’s guide grades shape as round, semi-round or oval, semi-baroque, or baroque.³

Old pearling regions have names of their own. In the Arabian Gulf, natural pearls are classified locally as dana, perfectly round and over 7 mm; sijni or dam’ah, drop-shaped; batan, button-shaped; baythawi, oval; and emtaaz, baroque.¹

Text version of this diagram

Eight outlines in two rows. Round is a perfect circle and semi-round a circle just slightly out of true. Button is seen from the side, a dome with a flat base. Drop is a teardrop with a pointed top. Pear is rounded at both ends, narrower at the top than the bottom. Oval is an upright ellipse. Baroque is an irregular, lumpy outline with no symmetry. Circled is an oval crossed by two curved grooves running around it.

Why pearls grow off-round#

Even a perfectly round bead doesn’t guarantee a round pearl. CIBJO’s guide explains that a cultured pearl grows out of shape when its pearl sac doesn’t lay down nacre evenly over the bead, or when organic matter is trapped in the nacre, and that the longer the culture lasts and the thicker the nacre grows, the more off-round pearls there are.³

The operation matters too. In Akoya culture, a badly damaged oyster, slow healing or cell debris caught between the bead and the pearl sac can distort the sac, causing bumps and distortions, and thin nacre often results in baroque pearls with blue or gray tints.³

How a pearl is started also shapes it. GIA’s journal notes that most Chinese farmers implant their mussels with pieces of mantle tissue only, without beads, which yields primarily baroque pearls and occasionally round ones.⁶ And keshi, which form without a bead as a by-product of culturing, are essentially baroque.¹

Circled pearls#

A circled pearl, also called cerclé, has one or more concentric rings or indented grooves around it.¹ Circled is one of GIA’s eight basic shapes.² CIBJO’s guide lists it among the shapes of the South Sea cultured pearls of Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam, and of Tahitian cultured pearls.³

Shapes by type#

Every main type can produce baroque pearls. The table gives the shapes recorded for each one in the Learn About Pearls dataset.

Value and uses#

Shape affects value. Round is the most difficult shape to culture, which makes round cultured pearls rarer than any other shape and, all else being equal, generally worth more. GIA adds that well-formed pear, oval and baroque cultured pearls are also prized.⁴ GIA’s buyer’s guide adds that perfectly spherical pearls and symmetrical drops are valued most.²

Baroque pearls have their own following. GIA notes that larger pearls with unusual shapes are popular with creative jewelry designers,⁵ and that designers sometimes mix shapes in one piece on purpose.⁴

Imitation pearls struggle to copy them. In GIA’s 1990 study of Majorica imitation pearls, only a limited number of baroque shapes were made, because they are harder to manufacture, and they could not compete on price with many cultured freshwater baroques.¹⁰ Any imitation, baroque or round, must be described as an imitation in the United States.¹¹ The page real vs imitation pearls explains how to tell them apart.