Mikimoto (company)

Mikimoto, officially K. Mikimoto & Co., Ltd., is a Japanese jewellery company specialising in cultured pearls and other fine jewellery. It was founded by Kōkichi Mikimoto in 1899 after his experiments in pearl cultivation on the coast of Mie Prefecture. Its flagship store is in Ginza, Tokyo, and its overseas retail network extends across Asia, Europe and the United States. The business developed pearl-farming operations alongside jewellery workshops, bringing cultivation, design, manufacture and retailing within the same group. Its present corporate structure emerged from the 1972 merger of its pearl-production and retail companies. Mikimoto has also made ceremonial jewellery for the Imperial House of Japan, including early twentieth-century commissions for empresses, jewellery for imperial weddings and, more recently, the tiara and accompanying jewellery made for Princess Kako of Akishino.

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