Baroque pearls are
pearls with an irregular non-spherical shape. Shapes can range from minor
aberrations to distinctly ovoid, curved, pinch, or lumpy shapes. Most cultured
freshwater pearls are baroque because freshwater pearls are mantle-tissue
nucleated instead of bead nucleated. Cultured saltwater pearls can also be
baroque, but tend to be more teardrop-shaped due to the use of a spherical
nucleation bead.
Wikipedia
Baroque pearl, pearl
that is irregularly or oddly shaped. Pearl formation does not always occur in
soft-tissue areas, where the expanding pearl sac grows regularly because it
encounters no appreciable resistance. Pearl cysts are sometimes lodged in
muscular tissue, for example, where, unable to overcome the resistance of tough
muscle fibres, they assume irregular or unusual shapes.
Baroque pearls were
highly prized by Renaissance jewelers, who saw them not as misshapen products
of sea mollusks but rather as unique and exquisite natural forms. They were
often used in pieces of jewelry to form the bodies of figures. A superb example
is a piece from the 16th century known as the Canning Jewel (Victoria and
Albert Museum, London), in which a large baroque pearl is used for the torso of
a sea figure having the body of a man and the tail of a fish, the whole mounted
in enameled gold set with pearls, rubies, and diamonds.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ever Since I was a little boy I would watch my mother and
grandmother open a big black metal box that contained the jewels they had
inherited or purchased through the years. There was one item that I always
wanted to hold in my hand. It was string of pearls that my mother called her
baroque pearls. She pronounced it the English way, barock. My Scottish friend
Graham Walker with whom I attend many of the Early Music Vancouver concerts
also pronounces it as barock,
I told Rosemary that for the all-woman performance of many of our favourite Vivaldi works this December 23 at the Chan (including the magnificent Gloria in D major, RV 589) I wanted her to wear my mother’s pearls. We looked and we looked. They were gone! I suggested that perhaps we had forgotten that we may have left them in our bank box. Rosemary’s text from the bank, “They are here,” was a relief and most satisfying.
My wife and two daughters Ale and Hilary (in their 40s) and our 15-year-old granddaughter will be sitting all on a row on the 23 savouring the Gloria which has been part of our family tradition for our Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) dinner since 1971.
In fact we first heard the Pacific Baroque Orchestra for the first time in 1996 at Ryerson United Church when they performed that work with the Elektra Women’s Choir. This time around it will not only be the chorus and soloists but the orchestra, too will all be women!
Since Rosemary and I lived in Mexico City from 1968 to 1975 (and I had lived there off and on since 1955) we knew all about baroque churches with their elaborate gold leafed retablos (altars and altar pieces).
In Mexico we learned of an even more intricate and elaborate form of the baroque and this was in the difficult to spell word Churrigueresqe named after Spanish architect architect and sculptor, José Benito de Churriguera (1665-1725). The style was important in Spain until the 1750s but was copied and elaborated with even more complication by Mexican architects.
You can bet that on December 23 while we listen to "the women" our memories will be of flickering lights in complex gold leafed Mexican retablos.
