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Gems And Pearls

Are saltwater pearls better than freshwater pearls? It is dependent on who you ask, but many pearl pros today agree that freshwater cultured pearls can rival the great thing about their saltwater cousins. Due to enhancements in culturing methodologies, freshwater pearl farmers are making stunning, round, gleaming pearls that are an enormous improvement over the wrinkled, rice-krispie-shaped gems that typified the freshwater pearl batch of the not-so-distant past.

Produced generally in China, freshwater pearls are frequently nucleated, or implanted, with mantle tissue only (instead of a mother-of-pearl bead). Because they do not contain a starter bead, tissue-nucleated freshwater pearls are 100% nacre. This gives them a beautiful luster and a durable surface that wonand#39;t simply flake or peel to reveal the inner bead. In contrast, pearls that are bead-nucleated and harvested too shortly typically have only a thin coating of nacre that may flake or peel. This is a major problem: Unlike lots of other precious stones, pearls canand#39;t be polished back to perfection.

Freshwater cultured pearls come in many lovely natural pastel colors including cream, white, yellow, orange, pink and lavender. (Commonly flattering lavender pearls are seriously popular right now.) White pearls are bleached to enhance their natural shine. Black freshwater cultured pearls are treated with dye or heat to produce their inky color.

Overall, freshwater pearls are way more abundant than other pearl types, so they are normally cheaper.

Are South Sea pearls really golden? Yes. Pearls produced in the aptly named "gold-lipped" oyster (P. Maxima) could be a beautiful creamy yellow, known as "golden" in the trade. (The silver-lipped variety of P. Maxima produces pretty silver or white pearls.) Grown in the South Seas"which stretch from the southern coast of Southeast Pacific Rim to the northern coast of Australia"these pearls are grown in one of the most important oysters utilized in pearl culturing. Because they can accept a bigger bead and secrete nacre quicker than their smaller opposite numbers, these big oysters produce giant pearls of exceptional luster and beauty. South Sea pearls ' thick coating of nacre gives the gems an excellent luster, or glow, that seems to come from deep within the pearl. The warm waters, abounding food supply and low pollution levels of the South Seas also help these oysters produce pretty cultured pearls.

Although Australia produces 60% of the worldand#39;s South Sea cultured pearls, Indonesian farmers work more with the gold-lipped oyster, and so produce more golden pearls. The silver-lipped variety produces similarly beautiful pearls that come in white to silver and generally have ros, blue or green overtones. Aside from giving them a light wash, pearl farmers do not treat South Sea pearls after harvest.

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by: Joesph Browne
Total views: 2 - Word Count: 446 - Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2011

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