Welcome to South Padre Island Pearl Company

South Padre Pearls and Gems was borne from the culmination of several generations of gold miners and gem seekers.   Like Christopher Columbus, my ancestors left the colorful shores of Genoa , Italy for the New World.   They traded the Mediterranean for the hundreds of miles of subterranean tunnels winding through the Rocky Mountains around Georgetown and Silver Plume, where they mined gold and silver.

As they did, my wife, RaeAnne and I traded our known lands for a New World following my uncles to tropical Brazil.   We created a gem cutting business in one of the main mining centers in Minas Gerais and named our Brazilian company PARAGEM.  

 Our idea was simple and very American.   We will do our business exactly the way everyone else does not—and offer something refreshing.   If they have it in every mall in the world then we don’t want to do it.   Now, Paragem has become a source for original lapidary designs that are now copied by many in “the business.”   We are the trend setters.     

Our cutters are trained to think for themselves—we don’t want to cut hundreds of the same item over and over to fill the ever insatiable mall shelves.   Our lapidaries cut every stone by hand using their creative intellect to find the beauty hidden in each raw gem crystal.   They are not ants in a factory, but true artists.

Recently we moved back to America to expand the Paragem Dream.   We have opened a retail jewelry boutique on South Padre Island called Paradise Gems.   This is where we now create our original designer jewelry:  one block from the waves along the Gulf of Mexico.

If you want the same jewelry that everyone else is wearing, then I think there is a mall 30 miles from our island, but if you want something original—perhaps a jewel direct from the red earthen mines of Brazil and our cutter’s hands—then you want to buy from us at Paradise Gems.  

Be an original—own an original.