Large 13mm carved cherry blossom coral vintage necklace

This is a vintage Japanese white coral necklace. Natural color, untreated not dyed. This necklace consists of beads that are each carved in a cherry blossom design on both sides of the bead. It is like a cherry blossom garland around your neck. This necklace has been re-polished and re-threaded to all-knotted, so the thread is nice and tight. Like most large carved coral pieces, this one has some cracks, inclusions and small holes. The largest bead seems to have been chipped, but I think it originally looked like this when the necklace was made. Please see the 10th picture. Size of coral beads of the necklace are about 8.5-13.4mm Necklace length: 46cm Total weight: 60.8g Silver clasp Mint condition My column series “Beads Around the World” was just published. This time I wrote about Japanese deep sea coral, which is used for jewelry. Japanese deep sea coral has been famous around the world and has been exported, similarly to Japanese cultured pearls. But its history started only about two hundred years ago, when a fisherman found coral in his net. Until then we did not know there was jewel coral around us. Jewel coral has been highly admired throughout history. It was carried by…