Pearls: how they are formed

Published the 25.09.2018

The Pearls are the jewels of nature that are formed and grow inside a mollusk, even the so-called cultivated ones grow but always inside a mollusk in a completely natural way. They can be formed in any type of mollusk even if generally speaking it is mainly about Oysters.

Pearl oyster

The birth of the Pearl is a very particular process, practically it is a foreign body, such as a fine grain of sand, a tiny parasite or a piece of sea shell that enters the soft inner mantle of the mollusc so that this to protect oneself, you begin to secrete a smooth and hard crystalline substance called mother of pearl which begins to trap it by forming various layers around it. For the complete training of a medium-sized pearl it is necessary for 5 or 6 years. In fact in this procedure, if started in a natural way it is not possible to manipulate the shape or dimension of the Pearl which will naturally be formed. This means that the Pearls are all unique in shape and color and brightness making each Pearl Necklace, Pearl Earring, Pearl Ring or something else exceptional.

When we speak of Perle Cultivated is the man who inserts this tiny foreign body inside the mantle of the mollusk, after which it is the mollusc itself that takes care of the whole process of formation of the Pearl. In this case, however, the man can make sure to obtain particular shapes simply by introducing the foreign body, for example a piece of mollusc or shell, of the shape he wants to obtain. The pioneers in the cultivation of pearls were the Japanese who began their cultivation around the end of the nineteenth century.

In pearl farms, mollusks are kept together by vertical ropes and immersed a few meters deep.

The most valuable Pearls are generally those that are formed in the seas adjacent to Australia in bivalve molluscs that can measure up to 20 cm in diameter and weigh 100 kg.

Cultured pearls absolutely have nothing to do with the much more well-known pearls of Mallorca, which are nothing but a completely synthetic product. They are in fact produced in factories without the aid of molluscs. The exact method of production is a secret, the little that is known is that we start from an opaque glass similar to a pearl that is repeatedly immersed in layers of a special liquid that should be a mixture of oil and fish scales, made last to dry with ultraviolet rays. Nowadays artificial production techniques make it very difficult to distinguish them from natural or cultivated ones.

Some little tricks to distinguish natural pearls from artificial ones can be:

1) gently rub the pearl against the incisor, in the Natural Pearl you will notice a rough and slightly grainy consistency while the fake ones tend to be smooth and perfect.

2) rub the Pearls together, the real pearls will give a feeling of braking, they will not flow smoothly like the feints instead.

3) rubbing the Natural Pearls you will also notice on the fingers the fine residues of mother of pearl that you will not find on the feints.

4) distrust Pearls too perfect, it is virtually impossible to find 2 identical natural pearls.

5) feel the temperature, the natural pearls give a feeling of cold that do not have synthetic ones.

There are also many other suggestions that we can give to try to distinguish the natural pearls, from the synthetic, if you are interested in the topic continues and follow us on all our channels Facebook , Instagram , Pinterest e Twitter. because we try to give information .

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