Pearls...the Queen of Gems!
(under construction)
Pearls were almost certainly humans first gem, requiring no
polishing or
faceting, ready to admire upon its discovery from its watery
home. While
pearls are a modern fashion accessory, it was only in the
past 100 years
that pearls went from being an ultra-ultra rare gem (along
the lines of a
red diamond nowadays) to a fashion accessory available to
most modern
women.
As an example
of the amazing worth of the pearl during most of humankinds
history, recall the famous 'pearl dinner' prepared by the
ruler of Egypt,
Cleopatra . Meeting with the Roman ruler Marc Antony,
Cleopatra wanted to
prove that Egypt's wealth meant that it was above military
conquest. To
prove her point, she bet Marc Antony that she could prepare
the worlds most
expensive dinner. After Marc Antony agreed to the bet, she
then took one of
her matched pearl earrings, crushed it into her wine, let it
dissolve and then
drank it. Shocked, Marc Antony declined his dinner (the
other pearl from her
earring set) and quickly agreed that she had won the
bet. After all, based
upon historical records, that single pearl that she drank
was worth
approximately $5,000,000 at the
time! During the Roman era, Roman generals
were able to finance entire military campaigns by selling a
single pearl from
the family jewelry collection. It is also widely conjectured
that Julius Caesar
invaded Britain primarily on the hopes of being able to find
pearls there.
Nowadays, with
the advent of cultured pearls, pearls are a massively more
accessible gem to the modern woman. However, to be fair, a
cultured pearl
is in some ways very different than a true natural pearl in
terms of its
composition.
To contrast
the difference, realize that a natural pearl is formed when
an
irritant (such as a small piece of shell...almost never a
piece of sand as
common knowledge states) embeds itself on the oysters
flesh. Unable to
flush
it out, the oyster secretes nacre (the same substance as
what lines the
inside
of the shell it lives in, known as mother of pearl) to coat
the irritant
and make
it smooth and non-irritating. A 10mm natural pearl then,
might be
9.8mm of
pure nacre, with the center being a .2mm irritant. By
contrast a
cultured pearl
is formed by placing a large bead formed from an oyster or
mollusk shell into the
oyster, and the oyster then forms the nacre coating
around
it. Except that
you now might have 1mm of pure nacre, and 9mm of
polished
shell. Hence
with a natural, you have nearly 100% pure nacre, with a
cultured you have
90%+ pure shell.
This is why
cultured pearls are not nearly as sturdy as true natural
pearls...,
however, with the advent of cultured pearls, pearls could be
'manufactured'
by
harnessing large crops of oysters and embedding them with
the bead
nucleus
with the majority of these oysters all producing a pearl. By
comparison, it would
often require pearl divers, risking life and limb, to haul
in
as many as 100,000
oysters to find enough pearls to make a single pearl
necklace...and not a very
well matched necklace at that. With the
tremendously faster
and easier
production of pearls by culturing, and their
being visually
indistinguishable from
naturals, their affordability caused a "pearl
crash" in the
1930's, putting most
natural pearl dealers out of business. People
could no
longer justify paying
$500,000 for a strand of natural pearls that
looked the same
as a $5000
cultured strand.
To be
continued...
