About Us

Geography, history and passion have created experts at Savage Pearls.

The Tie Between Tahitians and Hawaiians is as Basic as Their Bloodlines

The Tahitian and Hawaiian people share ancestry, culture, geography and an appreciation of natural beauty that no Polynesian ever takes for granted. It is no wonder that accessible, English speaking Hawai'i has become, for much of the Western world, the focal point of trade in Black Pearls from Tahiti.

Hawai'i was first populated (100 A.D.) by the descendants of people who had earlier (1800-1000 B.C.) occupied the Cook Islands, Tahiti and eventually the Marquises Archipelago. Navigators and sailors from the Marquises came to Hawai'i first, followed over the next three centuries or so by their cousins from Tonga and Samoa. By 700 A.D., some 800 years before Ferdinand Magellan, Tahitians were migrating directly to the Hawaiian chain.

That’s a lot of shared history.

Traveling to the source

The Polynesian Voyaging Society’s Hokule'a, a replica of the double-hulled sailing canoes used by the ancients, makes the trip between Hawai'i and Tahiti in about 23 days, without engines, navigational aides or modern amenities.  Just as the Marquisans did.

Today, nearly two millennia later, Robin Savage seats herself in a high tech device from Boeing and is on Tahiti in just a few hours.

From there, small planes and smaller boats take her to the underwater pearl farms of the Tuamotu and Gambier archipelagos.

Robin and her colleagues at Savage Pearls have built trusting relationships by working directly with the growers in the lagoons of places such as Rangiroa, Manihi, Marutea and Aratika. They choose directly from the French Polynesian harvest. They buy directly from the source.  As a result, they help customers to informed decisions based on a level of knowledge virtually unknown by most jewelers.

Internet Clients from Europe and the Americas. Walk-in customers from Japan.

Some of our very best clientele come all the way to our home in Hanalei, Kaua'i, Hawai'i from Japan, the virtual birthplace of the cultured pearl. The Japanese people, who are renowned for their knowledge of the gems, place special value on Tahitian Black Pearls. Fully 85% of the Tuamotu harvest is acquired by Japanese buyers, many of whom make their purchases in Hawai'i (Kaua'i is only half as far from Tokyo as Tahiti, and a favorite vacation destination of the Japanese).

At the Savage Pearls retail shop on Kaua'i’s north shore, discerning clients encounter value beyond what they could find at home, in a place of such extraordinary beauty, it’s only rival may be Tahiti itself.

And they learn that the person across the counter is likely to be the buyer who personally selected the pearls they are examining.

Unique Design and Flawless Artistry

Savage Pearls is in Hawai'i because it is the center of commerce in the Pacific, it has simple, direct access to French Polynesia, and because we can’t imagine being anywhere else.

Naturally, our designers and jewelers are heavily influenced by their environment, so the pieces they create with exquisite Tahitian Black Pearls are in the character of Oceania, imbued with the romance of Tahiti, and uniquely possessed of the exotic sensuality of the South Pacific.

Tahitian Black Pearl jewelry from Savage Pearls is not going to look like New York, London or Paris. It is going to look like hot tropical nights, unspoken passion and uniquely guilty pleasures.

It is going to be Polynesian. It is going to have a sense of place.

And it is going to take people’s breath away.