Salvador Assael is the son of the Italian diamond merchant James Assael, who, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, emigrated first to Cuba and then to America. During the war, James Assael sold watches to the American army.
After the end of the war, the American army stopped buying watches from Assael and he was left with unclaimed goods. James Assael found demand for his watches in Japan, where he sent his son in 1952. Often the Japanese paid Salvador for his watches not with money, but with pearls, in the cultivation of which Japan was a leader at that time.
This was the beginning of the Assael pearl empire. In 1972, Salvador took over his father’s company and named it Assael International. During their meeting in Saint-Tropez, Jean-Claude tells Salvador about the amazing black pearls of Polynesia and convinces him to start a business together.
Many were distrustful of the new type of pearl, believing that its unusual color was the result of artificial coloring. But Brouillet and Assael did not give up. In 1976, Assael returns from Tahiti with selected high quality pearls, from which he creates a magnificent necklace. He asks his friend, the legendary jewelry dealer Harry Winston, to sell this necklace at his store on 5th Avenue in New York. Winston agrees and displays the necklace in his window, setting an unprecedentedly high price for it.
Meanwhile, Assael begins a marketing campaign, placing advertisements in the most fashionable magazines, where in photographs a necklace of black pearls sparkled among scatterings of diamonds, emeralds and rubies. In the same year, the Gemological Institute of America certifies a new type of pearl, confirming that the unusual color of the pearls is natural and not the result of coloring. Gradually, the public begins to associate black pearls with exclusive luxury. The fashion for black pearls was born.
