Ohrid Pearl
Ohrid pearls are handmade jewellery pearls of North Macedonia, built up from a ground shell core coated with layer after layer of a milky emulsion made from the scales of the plasica, a small silvery fish endemic to Lake Ohrid. Because the recipe and the painstaking process are guarded as family secrets, only two families - the Talevs, who bought the formula in 1924, and the Filevs, who learned it in 1928 - have made authentic Ohrid pearls, passing the craft from father to son and hand-coating each grain up to ten times. Local tradition credits the secret to Jovan Subanović, a Russian emigrant