Diving into pearls
- antiqueringshop
- 16 jun 2018
- 2 minuten om te lezen
The most valuable pearls occur spontaneously in the wild, but are extremely rare. They are a worldwide phenomenon going back centuries. In times of the Roman Empire, pearl jewelry was a desirable and expensive luxury, a symbol of wealth and status. While in the early 19th century pearls embellished more intimate or ‘sentimental’ jewelry to celebrate love or express grief but it was also seen as a symbol of power. Later, in Paris, jewelers working in the Art Nouveau style were fascinated by the extraordinary shaped pearls and transformed them into breathtaking interpretations of nature. In the ‘Roaring Twenties’ urban life changed fashions, women wore short sleeveless slim-line dresses and pearls dangled down to the waist and beyond.
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.
Creating pearls
Wild pearls are referred to as natural pearls. Cultured or farmed pearls from oysters and freshwater mussels make up the majority of those currently sold. Attempts to produce pearls go back centuries. However, it was the Japanese Kokichi Mikimoto (1858–1954), who was granted a patent for developing round cultured pearls from Akoya oysters at the beginning of the 20th century. By the 1950's cultured pearls had conquered the market.
Creating pearls is a fascinating process that requires much time and dedication. The oyster bed must be nurtured thoroughly before a pearl can even be conceived. The cultivation process begins with a core. In natural pearls, this is simply a fragment of shell, fishbone or sand that floats into the shell of the oyster. in cultivated pearls, a piece of donor shell is tramsplanted into a recipient shell. To protect itself from this irritant, the oyster builds thousands of layers of nacre around it, forming a pearl.
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