Mikimoto sponsors Osaka's Vermeer show with three pearl-and-diamond earrings, the priciest at ¥17.6m
Mikimoto is putting three new high-jewellery pearl earrings, priced up to ¥17.6m, behind its sponsorship of a Vermeer exhibition opening in Osaka this August — a repeat of the cultural tie-in it ran when the same painting last toured Japan in 2012.
Mikimoto has been named special sponsor of "Vermeer: Girl with a Pearl Earring," an exhibition of 17th-century Dutch painting opening at the Osaka Nakanoshima Museum of Art on 21 August and running to 27 September, according to a company release dated 1 August. The museum organises the show together with the Asahi Shimbun and Asahi Broadcasting Television, the release said.
To mark the sponsorship, Mikimoto created three commemorative earrings, each set with a white South Sea pearl and diamonds in 18K white gold, the company said. Two are priced at ¥12.1m and ¥17.6m and sold only at its Ginza Main Store; the third, at ¥7.7m, is also available at its Osaka Umeda store. All three go on display from 1 August.
The tie-up is a repeat performance: Mikimoto also sponsored the painting's previous visit to Japan, in 2012, according to the release.
For a house whose founder is still credited, in its own telling, with being the first in the world to culture a pearl commercially, in 1893, attaching the brand to art history's most famous painted pearl is a fairly direct piece of positioning — less about selling three earrings than about putting Mikimoto pearls in the same sentence as a Vermeer. The distribution is just as deliberate: two of the three pieces exist only behind the counter in Ginza, turning a museum sponsorship into a reason for a client to travel to a specific store and buy at full price, rather than a mass-market promotion.