In Praise Of the Pearl
Posted on 12 October 2009
PEARLS OF WISDOM
From the beginning of time, pearls have figured in religions and mythology. The ancient Egyptians were buried with them. The Romans saw them as the ultimate symbol of status and wealth. The Greeks associated them with beauty, love and marriage. And Cleopatra supposedly dissolved a single pearl in a glass of wine and drank it, to win a wager with Mark Anthony that she could consume the wealth of an entire nation in just one meal.
In later years, the lust for these sea-grown gems grew and grew. During the Dark Ages, whilst noble maidens cherished their delicate pearl necklaces, their gallant knights wore pearls into battle to protect them from harm. During The Renaissance the Royal Courts of Europe were awash with pearls which became so coveted that a number of European countries passed laws forbidding anyone but the nobility to wear them. And as Europe expanded into the New World, the discovery of pearls in Central American waters added greatly to the wealth of Europe.
Sadly, by the 17th Century, greed and lust for the pearl had resulted in the loss of virtually all the American pearl oyster population and until the early 1900s, natural pearls were accessible only to the rich and famous. Indeed, such was the extraordinary value of the pearl, that in 1916 the famous French Jeweller, Jacques Cartier was able to buy his valuable retail store on New York’s Fifth Avenue for the price of just two pearl necklaces!
Happily today, with the advent of pearl cultivation and the manufacture of costume jewellery “pearls” in glass and acrylics, pearls are available and affordable to everyone.
A PEARL IS BORN
Unlike gemstones, which must be mined from the earth and cut and polished to bring out their beauty, pearls are grown by live oysters on the sea bed. What’s more, each individual pearl is born complete, with a shimmering iridescence, lustre and inner glow that is unlike any other gem on earth.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NATURAL PEARLS AND CULTURED PEARLS?
A natural pearl begins life as a foreign object, usually a parasite or piece of shell, that accidentally lodges itself in an oyster’s soft inner body. To defend its body, the oyster begins to secrete a smooth, hard crystalline substance, called “nacre” which wraps around the irritant. The oyster continues to secrete layer upon layer of nacre until the irritant is completely encased and a beautiful, totally individual pearl is created. The reason each pearl is so wonderfully lustrous and iridescent is because the nacre isn’t just soothing, it’s composed of microscopic crystals of calcium carbonate, each one so perfectly aligned with the next that light passes along the axis of one crystal and is reflected and refracted by another, producing a pale rainbow of light and colour.
Cultured pearls are created in that same way as natural pearls, but rather than leaving it to chance, a person carefully implants the irritant in the oyster.
THE KEY TO SUPERIOR PEARLS
Initially, pearl cultivation depended entirely on wild oysters. Then scientists discovered strains of oyster that possessed superior pearl-producing qualities, and cultivation became much more selective, thanks to a process known as “nucleation,” “grafting” or “seeding”. In this process, highly skilled technicians carefully open live pearl oysters and with surgical precision make an incision in the oyster’s body. They then place a tiny piece of “mantle tissue” from another oyster into the body, followed by a small round piece of shell, or “nucleus”. This nucleus is a mother-of-pearl bead made from an American freshwater mussel. The cells from the mantle tissue develop around the nucleus, forming a sac, which closes and starts to secrete nacre, the crystalline substance that forms the pearl.
The nucleated oysters are then returned to the sea suspended from rafts in the sheltered bays where they feed and grow, depositing layer after layer of lustrous nacre around the nuclei implanted within them.
HANDLE WITH CARE
The oysters are given the utmost care. Technicians check water temperatures and feeding conditions daily at various depths, moving the oysters up or down accordingly. From time to time, the oysters are also lifted from the sea for cleaning and health treatments and all seaweed, barnacles and organisms that might interfere with their feeding are removed from the oysters’ shells. The shells are also treated with medicinal compounds to ward off parasites.
After many months of growth and care, the oysters are ready for harvest. Those that have survived the many perils of the sea are brought ashore, opened and the beautiful, lustrous and very valuable cultured pearls are revealed.
THE QUEST FOR PERFECT PEARLS
Saltwater cultured pearls can never be mass-produced. Millions of oysters are nucleated every year, but only a very small proportion live to produce fine-quality cultured pearls. This is due entirely to the whims of Mother Nature. Many oysters die during the nucleating process. Others are weak and fall prey to disease. Heavy rains often flood the bays with fresh water, reducing their salt content and killing the oysters. Sometimes, species of phytoplankton grow out of control, creating the dreaded “red tide,” which exhausts the oxygen in the water and suffocates the oysters. And on top of all that, there are threats from typhoons, predators, parasites and lack of sufficient nutrients in the water.
In reality, only 50% of nucleated oysters survive to bear pearls. Only 20% of those pearls are perfect enough to be marketable. And less than 5% are of the perfect shape, lustre and colour to be considered fine gem quality. In short, the perfect pearl is truly a rare event, blessed by Nature.
GETTING SORTED IS A NIGHTMARE
As no two pearls are ever exactly the same, sorting pearls is extremely difficult, time-consuming and skilled. Each pearl must be sorted by size, shape, colour and lustre, therefore it is handled hundreds of times.
Once sorted, the pearls must also be drilled with care and precision. An inexperienced operator can split or ruin pearls in an instant. After all, a hole drilled even slightly off-centre will spoil the symmetry of the jewellery.
HIGHLY STRUNG OR WHAT?
Matching and stringing pearls requires even more skill than sorting, since each highly-trained expert will need to compare literally thousands of pearls of similar size, shape, lustre and colour to find the closest matches. Indeed, to find 47 perfectly-matched pearls for a 16-inch necklace, a pearl processor must work through in excess of 10,000 pearls!
SPOILED FOR CHOICE
madaboutjewellery.com offers a variety of pearls to suit all tastes and budgets. Our top of the range Collection - Posh Pearls – come all the way from exotic places such as Tahiti, the South Sea islands and Akoya. These iridescent individual pearl masterpieces have been used in a range of styles, some with sparkling Swarovski crystals, some with an unexpected dash of colour, some exactly like the classical pearls worn by Princess Grace and Audrey Hepburn. And for those on a smaller budget, we also offer a classic range of glass “pearls” (glass beads covered in pearl essence) which have been designed to look and feel exactly like the real thing.
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