39 Corals, Turquoise, Silver necklace. The Corals are old handcut beads from Sth India, origin Mediterranean. Mediterranean Coral has been imported into India and especially Sth India, for hundreds of years, in natural branch form, cut and formed and polished there. The 39 Corals in the above strand were all cut from the same branch, all with the same deep orange-red colour saturation, and all, for whatever reason, cut with large holes.
The six old handcrafted fluted Tribal Silver beads are rare fine examples of superior Himachel Pradesh Tribal Silver craftsmanship. ( Himachel Pradesh, a northern India region in the Himalayan foothills where sits Simla, the summer headquarters of the British Raj (in its time), is renowned for its beauty and cleanliness, and for the high quality of its Silver craftsmanship.
The Turquoise heishi spacers in the above necklace are handcut Chinese, from one of the dozen or more working Turquoise mines of that country. They have been used in the creation of this necklace because the combination of Turquoise and Coral is a Tibetan custom, and because their use as spacers allowed knotting between each pair, the holes of both the Coral and Silver beads being too large for effective knotting.
Note: the above strand has been professionally strung in Sydney, by professional Pearl threaders, knotted throughout, and the rare old Silver fluted beads are costly, but by far the biggest cost component of this strand lies with the 8.2 grams of old gem-quality AGrade Corals, which alone constitute over 70% of the price.
Note also: the primary image is true to colour; the secondary image, showing the necklace in full, is darker than the reality.