About Pearls
Pearls have long been esteemed and valued as beautiful jewelry items, and are still widely sought after today. Unlike other gemstones that are mined in the earth, pearls are formed within living creatures--oysters and mussels. However, since it is very rare to find a naturally formed pearl in one of these mollusks, today the cultured pearl industry is a huge supplier of pearls for use in jewelry. Does this Spark an idea?
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History
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Pearls have been worn by humans for thousands of years to symbolize their wealth and status. At the height of the Roman Empire, pearls were commonly used in jewelry pieces, and archeologists have been able to recover many of these items, with many dating from 100 B.C. to 200 A.D. To many cultures worldwide, pearls have long been a symbol of beauty and purity.
Historically, most natural pearls were found in the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and Gulf of Mannar. In modern times, cultured saltwater pearls are most often farmed in the Indian and South Pacific oceans, while cultured freshwater pearls are largely produced in China and Japan.
Types
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Natural pearls are created entirely by nature without human interference by pearl oysters in saltwater or by different varieties of pearl mussels in freshwater. Today, these natural pearls are extremely rare. Cultured pearls are the most common type of pearls used in jewelry today. They are created on pearl farms by surgically planting a nucleus around which pearls are more likely to form in saltwater oysters or freshwater mussels. This process takes human expertise and careful handling to obtain quality pearls.
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Features
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Pearls come in many different colors, including black, gold, pink and purple, but are most commonly white or cream in color. Perfectly round pearls are the most sought after, and the most rare, shape of pearls available, but they also can be drop-shaped, semi-round, oval, and other lesser-desired shapes.
A unique feature of pearls is their luster, or glowing quality. This luster is created by the reflection of light by the many thin, semi-transparent layers that make up the pearl. The iridescence of pearls is also distinctive among other jewelry stones. Iridescence is created by the refraction of light by the layers of the pearl, producing the same effect as a prism in sunlight.
Identification
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There are several different ways to distinguish a natural pearl from a cultured pearl, and to differentiate both of these real pearls from imitations pearls.
Real pearls, when rubbed across a person's front teeth should feel gritty, while imitation pearls are completely smooth. The grittiness of real pearls is a result of how their many layers are formed within an oyster or mussel, and cannot be duplicated in laboratory imitation pearls.
Cultured pearls can be differentiated from natural pearls, but usually only by gemologists using a specific x-ray technique. This x-ray process determines whether the pearls have a solid nucleus, indicating they are cultured pearls, or the many different growth rings of a natural pearl.
Considerations
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Pearls are common in many types of jewelry, but perhaps the most traditional and still highly popular use for pearls is in strand necklaces. Pearl necklaces have different names depending on their length, very different from the standard measurement identification of other gemstone necklaces. The shortest necklace type made from pearls is referred to as a collar. It sits snugly across the throat and is often made of more than one strand of pearls. Next is the choker that sits at the base of the neck, and then the longer princess length that sits at the collarbone. Matinee-length pearl necklaces are just under 2 feet long and sit just above the breasts, while the opera length falls down across the sternum. Any length beyond that is simply called the pearl rope. These terms have long been used to identify pearl necklaces, and while they had more significance historically, are still in use today.
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