Down in the boule mine another great find. Just need to chip it away from the mother stone and the boule are almost ready to use. I know there is an argument about using farmed boule but to be honest the natural ones are far better. It maybe more environmentally friendly to farm them but it takes ages to seed the iron filing into the rock and wait for them to grow in to full sized boule. It may work well with farmed pearls but the boule process takes even longer. Here we have an example of a boule just about to be broken out of its ore stone. Forged underground for thousands of years and finally cut out of the solid rock the average boule around 700grams will need about 1422 kilos of ore dug out of the ground just to find one. Getting a matching set is like finding a four leaf clover but the skilled team work like demons to put them together and then stamp the weight on them. The rich vein of boulerock is found close to the French Swiss border and was the main spark behind the great boule wars of the 1890’s fighting over the very spot the boulerock seam was closest to the surface. Who knew?
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