Freshwater Pearl and Recycled Coral Necklace

About a month ago I picked up an old (or 'vintage' as people like to say) coral necklace second-hand from someone having a clear-out. I only paid a few pounds for it and assumed it was just dyed bamboo coral. Anyway... to cut a long story short, it turned out to be undyed precious coral of one of the Corallium species (most likely C. elatius) and worth much more than I paid. Despite this I didn't like the original style of the necklace (which was a very long 'opera strand' and looked somewhat sparse) so I cleaned up the coral (which was very grubby) and used it create this necklace, also adding nine large nugget freshwater pearls nestled in amongst the coral branches. The necklace is just under 16" long, but has a removable 2" extender chain with a shell charm at the end, and a larger starfish charm attached to the clasp (but you can't really see it in the photo). It's shown worn without the extender chain in the picture on the right.

This is the first piece I've made to keep myself all year so far ^_^. I would have never bought the coral new for ethical reasons and precious coral is normally very expensive.

Credit goes to mellowmint for the background texture mellowmint.deviantart.com/art/…