String the Dark Pearl

The catch of pearl oysters is similar to the numbers of oysters taken during the natural pearl days. Hence significant numbers of natural pearls are still found in the Australian Indian Ocean waters from wild oysters. X-ray examination is required to positively verify natural pearls found today. Keshi pearls , although they often occur by chance, are not considered natural. They are a byproduct of the culturing process, and hence do not happen without human intervention. They are quite small, typically only a few millimeters.

Keshi pearls are produced by many different types of marine mollusks and freshwater mussels in China.

Keshi pearls are actually a mistake in the cultured pearl seeding process. In seeding the cultured pearl, a piece of mantle muscle from a sacrificed oyster is placed with a bead of mother of pearl within the oyster. If the piece of mantle should slip off the bead, a pearl forms of baroque shape about the mantle piece which is entirely nacre. Therefore, a Keshi pearl could be considered superior to cultured pearls with a mother of pearl bead center. In the cultured pearl industry, the resources used to create a mistaken all nacre baroque pearl is a drain on the production of round cultured pearls.

Therefore, they are trying to improve culturing technique so that keshi pearls do not occur. All nacre pearls may one day be limited to natural found pearls. Tahitian pearls , frequently referred to as black pearls, [15] are highly valued because of their rarity; the culturing process for them dictates a smaller volume output and they can never be mass-produced because, in common with most sea pearls, the oyster can only be nucleated with one pearl at a time, while freshwater mussels are capable of multiple pearl implants.

Before the days of cultured pearls, black pearls were rare and highly valued for the simple reason that white pearl oysters rarely produced naturally black pearls, and black pearl oysters rarely produced any natural pearls at all. Since the development of pearl culture technology, the black pearl oysters Pinctada margaritifera found in Tahiti and many other Pacific islands including the Cook Islands and Fiji are being extensively used for producing cultured pearls.

The rarity of the black cultured pearl is now a "comparative" issue. The black cultured pearl is rare when compared to Chinese freshwater cultured pearls, and Japanese and Chinese akoya cultured pearls, and is more valuable than these pearls. However, it is more abundant than the South Sea pearl, which is more valuable than the black cultured pearl. This is simply because the black pearl oyster Pinctada margaritifera is far more abundant than the elusive, rare, and larger south sea pearl oyster Pinctada maxima , which cannot be found in lagoons, but which must be dived for in a rare number of deep ocean habitats or grown in hatcheries.

Black pearls are very rarely black: In the absence of an official definition for the pearl from the black oyster, these pearls are usually referred to as "black pearls". A farm in the Gulf of California , Mexico, is culturing pearls from the black lipped Pinctada mazatlanica oysters and the rainbow lipped Pteria sterna oysters. Biologically speaking, under the right set of circumstances, almost any shelled mollusk can produce some kind of pearl. However, most of these molluskan pearls have no luster or iridescence.

The great majority of mollusk species produce pearls which are not attractive, and are sometimes not even very durable, such that they usually have no value at all, except perhaps to a scientist or collector, or as a curiosity. These objects used to be referred to as "calcareous concretions" by some gemologists, even though a malacologist would still consider them to be pearls. Valueless pearls of this type are sometimes found in edible mussels , edible oysters , escargot snails, and so on.

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The GIA and CIBJO now simply use the term 'pearl' or, where appropriate, the more descriptive term 'non-nacreous pearl' when referring to such items [21] [22] and, under Federal Trade Commission rules, various mollusk pearls may be referred to as 'pearls', without qualification. A few species produce pearls that can be of interest as gemstones. These species include the bailer shell Melo , the giant clam Tridacna , various scallop species, Pen shells Pinna , and the Haliotis iris species of abalone.

Pearls of abalone, or paua , are mabe pearls, or blister pearls, unique to New Zealand waters and are commonly referred to as 'blue pearls'. They are admired for their incredible luster and naturally bright vibrant colors that are often compared to opal. Another example is the conch pearl sometimes referred to simply as the 'pink pearl' , which is found very rarely growing between the mantle and the shell of the queen conch or pink conch, Strombus gigas , a large sea snail or marine gastropod from the Caribbean Sea. These pearls, which are often pink in color, are a by-product of the conch fishing industry, and the best of them display a shimmering optical effect related to chatoyance known as 'flame structure'.

Somewhat similar gastropod pearls, this time more orange in hue, are again very rarely found in the horse conch Triplofusus papillosus. The second largest pearl known was found in the Philippines in and is known as the Pearl of Lao Tzu. It is a naturally occurring, non-nacreous, calcareous concretion pearl from a giant clam.

Because it did not grow in a pearl oyster it is not pearly; instead the surface is glossy like porcelain. The largest known pearl also from a giant clam is the Pearl of Puerto , also found in the Philippines by a fisherman from Puerto Princesa , Palawan Island. The ancient chronicle Mahavamsa mentions the thriving pearl industry in the port of Oruwella in the Gulf of Mannar in Sri Lanka. It also records that eight varieties of pearls accompanied Prince Vijaya 's embassy to the Pandyan king as well as king Devanampiya Tissa 's embassy to Emperor Ashoka.

For thousands of years, seawater pearls were retrieved by divers in the Indian Ocean in areas such as the Persian Gulf , the Red Sea and the Gulf of Mannar. Margarita pearls are extremely difficult to find today and are known for their unique yellowish color. The most famous Margarita necklace that anyone can see today is the one that then Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt gave to Jacqueline Kennedy when she and her husband, President John F.

Kristin Witt (Author of String the Dark Pearl)

Kennedy paid an official visit to Venezuela. 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 mussels and oysters produce pearls. In a haul of three tons, only three or four oysters will produce perfect pearls.

Pearls were one of the attractions which drew Julius Caesar to Britain. Pearling was banned in the U. Today, the cultured pearls on the market can be divided into two categories. The first category covers the beaded cultured pearls, including Akoya, South Sea and Tahiti. These pearls are gonad grown, and usually one pearl is grown at a time. This limits the number of pearls at a harvest period. The pearls are usually harvested after one year for akoya, 2—4 years for Tahitian and South Sea, and 2—7 years for freshwater.

This perliculture process was first developed by the British biologist William Saville-Kent who passed the information along to Tatsuhei Mise and Tokichi Nishikawa from Japan. The second category includes the non-beaded freshwater cultured pearls, like the Biwa or Chinese pearls. As they grow in the mantle, where on each wing up to 25 grafts can be implanted, these pearls are much more frequent and saturate the market completely. An impressive improvement in quality has taken place in the last ten years when the former rice-grain-shaped pebbles are compared with the near round pearls of today.

In the last two years large near perfect round bead nucleated pearls up to 15mm in diameter have been produced with metallic luster. The nucleus bead in a beaded cultured pearl is generally a polished sphere made from freshwater mussel shell. Along with a small piece of mantle tissue from another mollusk donor shell to serve as a catalyst for the pearl sac, it is surgically implanted into the gonad reproductive organ of a saltwater mollusk.

In freshwater perliculture, only the piece of tissue is used in most cases, and is inserted into the fleshy mantle of the host mussel. South Sea and Tahitian pearl oysters, also known as Pinctada maxima and Pinctada margaritifera , which survive the subsequent surgery to remove the finished pearl, are often implanted with a new, larger beads as part of the same procedure and then returned to the water for another 2—3 years of growth.

Despite the common misperception, Mikimoto did not discover the process of pearl culture. Nishikawa was granted the patent in , and married the daughter of Mikimoto. Mikimoto was able to use Nishikawa's technology. After the patent was granted in , the technology was immediately commercially applied to akoya pearl oysters in Japan in Mise's brother was the first to produce a commercial crop of pearls in the akoya oyster. Mitsubishi's Baron Iwasaki immediately applied the technology to the south sea pearl oyster in in the Philippines, and later in Buton, and Palau.

Today, a hybrid mollusk is used in both Japan and China in the production of akoya pearls. Cultured Pearls were sold in cans for the export market. These were packed in Japan by the I. Mitsubishi commenced pearl culture with the South Sea pearl oyster in , as soon as the technology patent was commercialized. By this project was showing signs of success, but was upset by the death of Tatsuhei Mise. Although the project was recommenced after Tatsuhei's death, the project was discontinued at the beginning of WWII before significant productions of pearls were achieved. Japanese companies were involved in all projects using technicians from the original Mitsubishi South Sea pre-war projects.

Kuri Bay is now the location of one of the largest and most well-known pearl farms owned by Paspaley , the biggest producer of South Sea pearls in the world. In , China overtook Japan in akoya pearl production. These pearls are then processed often simply matched and sorted , relabeled as product of Japan, and exported. In the past two decades, cultured pearls have been produced using larger oysters in the south Pacific and Indian Ocean.

The largest pearl oyster is the Pinctada maxima , which is roughly the size of a dinner plate. South Sea pearls are characterized by their large size and warm luster. In , pearl farmers began growing cultured freshwater pearls using the pearl mussels native to Lake Biwa. This lake, the largest and most ancient in Japan, lies near the city of Kyoto.

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The extensive and successful use of the Biwa Pearl Mussel is reflected in the name Biwa pearls , a phrase which was at one time nearly synonymous with freshwater pearls in general. Since the time of peak production in , when Biwa pearl farmers produced six tons of cultured pearls, pollution has caused the virtual extinction of the industry. Japanese pearl farmers recently [ when?

This industry has also nearly ceased production, due to pollution. Japanese pearl producers also invested in producing cultured pearls with freshwater mussels in the region of Shanghai , China. China has since become the world's largest producer of freshwater pearls, producing more than 1, metric tons per year in addition to metric measurements, Japanese units of measurement such as the kan and momme are sometimes encountered in the pearl industry.

Led by pearl pioneer John Latendresse and his wife Chessy, the United States began farming cultured freshwater pearls in the mids.

National Geographic magazine introduced the American cultured pearl as a commercial product in their August issue. The Tennessee pearl farm has emerged as a tourist destination in recent years, but commercial production of freshwater pearls has ceased. For many cultured pearl dealers and wholesalers, the preferred weight measure used for loose pearls and pearl strands is the momme. Momme is a weight measure used by the Japanese for centuries.

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Today, momme weight is still the standard unit of measure used by most pearl dealers to communicate with pearl producers and wholesalers. Reluctant to give up tradition, the Japanese government formalized the kan measure in as being exactly 3. In the United States, during the 19th and 20th centuries, through trade with Japan in silk cloth the momme became a unit indicating the quality of silk cloth. Though millimeter size range is typically the first factor in determining a cultured pearl necklace's value, the momme weight of pearl necklace will allow the buyer to quickly determine if the necklace is properly proportioned.

This is especially true when comparing the larger south sea and Tahitian pearl necklaces. The value of the pearls in jewelry is determined by a combination of the luster, color, size, lack of surface flaw and symmetry that are appropriate for the type of pearl under consideration. Among those attributes, luster is the most important differentiator of pearl quality according to jewelers. White wax candles surrounded by green tinsel, string of artificial pearls and colorful fir cones against the background of the fireplace.

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