Akaroa Blue Pearls)

Akaroa is our only retail outlet, but our web site enables us to keep in contact with and service our customers. It has to be the best place in the world to work at the end of a wharf in a studio that is surrounded by water on three sides. There is a little viewing bay window where you sit and try and concentrate on the designs in front of you. Out the windows are children fishing just a few feet away, boats, yachts cruising past. This is where you would talk over a design concept how to set your blue pearls with the resident jeweller Murray Brereton. It's worth the drive over the winding hills from Christchurch just to sit here! Across the harbour is where the Blue Pearls are actually grown and harvested over a three year period. To make it easy to understand the process, right next door to the studio is a walk around display put together by Eyris Blue Pearls where you can view an aquarium with live paua. It also shows how the pearls evolve and are produced. Abalone pearls are still regarded as the rarest pearl in the world. Murray started making and selling jewellery with the blue pearls from the wharf about 5 years ago, realising the potential of this very beautiful and unique gem. The spot on the end of the wharf is now a gently thriving business which employs three staff as well as two more staff in another shop on the main road in Akaroa. Murray has a personality that is suited to his laid back lifestyle and his wistful contemplative manner attracts clients to him from the ends of the earth it seems. It is always a mark of success how much home grown trade you build up and there are more and more New Zealand women who are proud owners of a beautiful piece. Needless to say, so are many women from countries all over the world. What is the secret of his success? He is regarded as trustworthy and loyal as well as being so very talented. An artist who has the gift of being able to listen to his clients and hear what they have to say and what they want from a piece of personally designed jewellery. It's not all about his art but it's also about them and who they are. In the last five years of selling the blue pearls, he has many good recommendations from people from all over the globe. In some ways this enchanted little shop is the heart of Akaroa. It encapsulates everything that is charming and unspoiled about the town. The drive to Akaroa is one of the unheralded wonders of the world, only an hour or so from Christchurch to the small fishing village with mostly uncrowded waterfront cafes and restaurants and an astounding range of bed and breakfast places from historic lodges to rustic luxury hideaways. It is a historic village settled by the English, French, Germans and even some Chinese back in the mid 1800's. Originally a port servicing the whaling industry it later evolved into a fishing and cray fishing town along with pastoral farming. It is now largely a tourist and holiday house mecca for South Islanders and more recently from overseas, those looking for a spot on the planet that is still all peace and quiet.