Imperial Pearls

www.wspearl.com

Pearls have been prized for their beauty and rarity of over four thousand years. In Ancient China, India and Egypt, to Imperial Rome, in the Arab world, to Native American tribes, cultures around the world and throughout recorded history have valued these unique, biologically based Gemstone - much longer than any other gem.

The pearl is the only gemstone which is grown within a living organism. Pearls are formed in oysters or mollusks when a foreign substance (usually a parasite - not a grain of sand) invades the mollusk's shell, within the mantle of soft tissue, and picking up epithelial cells. In response to irritation, the shape of epithelial cells in a sac (known as a pearl sac) which secretes a crystalline substance called nacre, the same substance that is within the shell of an oyster, which s' accumulates in layers around the irritant, forming the pearl.

There are about 8,000 different species of two shells (bi-valve) mollusks, of which only about 20 types are always capable of producing pearls. Natural pearls have always been extremely rare and valuable. Because the layers of nacre tend to maintain the irregular shape of the original irritant, natural pearls, which are round or spherical shape are even rarer still, and are popular. Most natural pearls are irregular in shape.

In a completely natural state, only a very small percentage of oysters will ever produce a pearl at all. Among the pearls produced, only a handful will develop a desirable size, shape and color, and only a small fraction of these will be harvested by humans. It is commonly accepted that only one in ten thousand oysters naturally produce a gem quality pearl. Obviously, if we relied solely on the nature, ownership of beads would be further relegated to only the richest people in the world, and the pearl oyster production would be on the brink of extinction because of overfishing. Like pearls were a prized gem by much of the world thousands of years, this need led to the development of cultured pearls.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, however, several Japanese researchers have discovered a method of producing pearls artificially. Essentially, the technique involves inserting a foreign substance, or nucleus, into the tissue of the oyster or mollusk, and then return to the sea creature and allowing the resulting cultured pearl to develop naturally. This practice was widespread harvesting pearls Mabe. Kokichi Mikimoto is credited with perfecting the technique of artificially stimulating the development of Akoya pearls in oysters turn, receive a patent for this technology in 1916. Although patented in 1916 this technique has since been improved and widely used in the world of pearls - not just used for Akoya cultured pearl, but freshwater, South Sea and Tahitian pearls as well.

Mikimoto discovery has opened the door to a greatly expanded industry pearl, beads could be used as an agricultural crop, rather than simply sought hit-and-miss. These cultured pearls can now be produced in sufficient quantities to make them accessible to almost everyone.

The pearl industry has now largely surpassed that of the natural pearl industry. Even if a market persists for pearls gifted to us by nature, these pearls are becoming harder to find, with rare full strands auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Today, buying a pearl necklace around any store in the world means purchasing a strand of cultured pearls.