History Of Pacific Pearls

Rudolf Heinrich Voll, (1911-2009) was born in Berlin, Germany, and became an auto body designer in the running-board era. He emigrated to South Africa in 1937 and arrived in Japan in 1938. He founded Pacific Pearl Co., Inc. in Tokyo, Japan, incorporated in 1951. In his own words, he was in the cultured pearl business before anyone wanted them. This changed during the following decades, with German speakers often among the biggest per-capita consumers. The company exports akoya and southsea pearls to Germany, and Japan freshwater pearls (Kasumi-ga-Ura) mostly to the USA.

Rudolf’s wife Frieda (1914-1997) worked as a diplomat’s nanny in Chicago, and was stranded in Japan on the purportedly safer route back to Germany after war broke out in 1939. She founded the first company dedicated to pearl sales in Hong Kong in 1967, reincorporated in 1969 as Pacific Pearls Tokyo (R.Voll) Ltd. This provided them, son Fuji and daughter Aloha access to Chinese pearl products as they appeared and evolved. The company exclusively sells pearls, mainly by export.


Fuji Voll was born 1948 in New York City, and got to California 40 years later, via Europe and Asia. With Marcia Fentress, he set up Pacific Pearls in 1990. We serve pearl dealers, jewelry manufacturers, designers, and retailers mostly in the western USA, specializing in non-standard to blatantly curiosity-provoking pearls for a market that seems remarkably open to pearl novelties without precedent.

Sarah Canizzaro (who also trades in pearls at kojimapearl.com) has capably collaborated in our US operation since 1994, and exhibits with us at trade shows in California, Las Vegas and Tucson. Practiced from an early age in many areas of the pearl trade, she contributes much to the diversity of our products – and to the success of our mission… to offer the most unusual pearls that are attractive as well as intriguing.

Fuji Voll, ca. 1961 at a JPEPA* monthly auction in Tokyo.  Members (producers, processors, wholesalers, and exporters) exchanged lots by means of bids inserted in a sealed cardboard box on each tray containing a hank of strands or a dish of loose pearls.  These trays were pushed along tables, conveyor belt style. 

* Japan Pearl Export Processors' Association