Cultured & Freshwater Pearls

A pearl is a hard, rounded object produced by certain animals, primarily mollusks such as oysters. Pearls can be used in jewelry and also crushed in cosmetics or paint. Pearl is valued as a gemstone and is cultivated or harvested for jewelry. more...

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The pearl is also the birthstone of the month of June.

Pearls are formed inside the shell of certain bivalve mollusks. As a response to an irritating parasite inside its shell, the mollusk will deposit layers of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) in the form of the minerals aragonite or calcite (both crystalline forms of calcium carbonate) held together by an organic horn-like compound called conchiolin. This combination of calcium carbonate and conchiolin is called nacre, or as most know it, mother-of-pearl. The idea that a grain of sand acts as a \"seed\" for the pearl is a myth.

The unique lustre of pearls depends upon the reflection and refraction of light from the translucent layers and is finer in proportion as the layers become thinner and more numerous. The iridescence that some pearls display is caused by the overlapping of successive layers, which breaks up light falling on the surface. Pearls are usually white, sometimes with a creamy or pinkish tinge, but may be tinted with yellow, green, blue, brown, purple, or black. Black pearls, frequently referred to as Black Tahitian Pearls, are highly valued because of their rarity; the culturing process for them dictates a smaller volume output and can never be mass produced. This is due to bad health and/or non-survival of the process, rejection of the nucleus (the small object such as a tiny fish, grain of sand or crab that slips naturally inside an oyster's shell or inserted by a human), and their sensitivity to changing climatic and ocean conditions.

Pearls fit into two categories: freshwater and saltwater. As their name implies, freshwater pearls are formed in freshwater mussels that live in lakes, rivers, ponds and other bodies of fresh water. Most freshwater cultured pearls sold today come from China. By contrast, saltwater pearls grow in oysters that live in the ocean, usually in protected lagoons. Akoya, South Sea and Tahitian are the three main types of saltwater pearls.

History

Before the beginning of the 20th Century, pearl hunting was the most common way of harvesting pearls. Divers manually pulled oysters from ocean floors and river bottoms and checked them individually for pearls. Not all natural oysters produce pearls, however. In fact, in a haul of three tonnes, only three or four oysters will produce perfect pearls.

Now, however, almost all pearls used for jewelry are cultured by planting a core or nucleus into pearl oysters. The pearls are usually harvested three years after the planting, but it can take up to as long as six years before a pearl is produced. This mariculture process was first developed by Kokichi Mikimoto in Japan, who was granted a patent for the process in 1896. The nucleus is generally a polished bead made from mussel shell. Along with a small scrap of mantle tissue from another oyster to serve as an irritant, it is surgically implanted near the oyster's genitals. Oysters which survive the subsequent surgery to remove the finished pearl are often implanted with a new, larger nucleus as part of the same procedure and then returned to the water for another three years of growth.

Read more at Wikipedia.org