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Pearl Jewelry

Pearl jewelry is jewelry that features the result of an interaction between an irritant and a mollusk. Naturally formed pearls are a very rare occurrence. They are the result of years of interaction between a mollusk’s defensive systems and the irritant. The popular illustration of how pearls come to be is that they center on a grain of sand.

While this is an adequate picture, sand is very rarely the instigator in these cases. It is far more often the case that bacteria are the instigators. The mollusk acts to seal off the potential threat, which is the nucleus of a pearl. As time goes on, more layers are added to the barrier, resulting in the pearl we all know today. Gathering these for use in pearl jewelry is the primary use for pearls today.

Pearl jewelry is far more often made from cultured pearls than natural ones. Cultured pearls are made with the help of man on specially controlled pearl farms. Instead of a tiny, sometimes microscopic instigator, cultured pearls introduce a very large core to the mollusks. This core is coated with just a few layers of the pearlescent deposits that mollusks create before being harvested. The resulting pearls are much larger, in much less time, than natural pearls, and since the same procedure can be implemented for each animal on the farm, the yield is much higher for cultured pearls than natural pearl diving.

 

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