This pearl stopped me—irregular, iridescent, kind of a punk rock pearl. That’s the thing about baroques: the imperfection is the point. A South Sea oyster spent years wrapping an irritant in luminous layers of nacre, and what emerged was this singular, positively Rubenesque beauty. I strung it on a single wire of 22K gold, wound into a spiral cup at the base, knotted at the top, and finished with my signature solid gold dotted bail. The ancients believed pearls embodied wisdom and protection, which tracks—something this beautiful had to fight to exist.