After the read of What is A Pearl article, you will learn about:
What is a pearl?
What is a pearl’s chemical composition?
What is a pearl’s shape?
What are the natural pearl colors?
How are pearls formed?
What are artificially cultured pearls?
What is a pearl’s characteristic?
What are the types of pearls?
What is a pearl grading guide?
What is a pearl used for?
What is a pearl care and cleaning guide?
Why are my pearls turning yellow?
How do you clean pearls that have yellowed?
What are pearls?
Pearl, also known as nacre, or mother-of-pearl, is an ancient organic gemstone, mainly produced in pearl shellfish and mother-of-pearl shellfish mollusks. Pearls for shellfish endocrine action and generated by the mineral beads containing calcium carbonate, by a large number of tiny aragonite crystals assembled. There are abundant varieties with different shapes and colors.
Geological and archaeological research has proved that 200 million years ago, the earth already has a pearl. Pearls have been used medicinally in China for more than 2,000 years.
The international gemstone industry will also be listed as the lucky stone of the June birthdate pearl, the thirteenth anniversary of the wedding, and the thirtieth anniversary of the commemorative stone.
Pearls with magnificent colors and elegant temperament, symbolize health, purity, wealth, and happiness, since ancient times for people to love.
Pearls are divided into freshwater pearls and marine pearls. There are many colors of pearls: white, red, yellow, dark, and mixed colors, most of which are opaque.
What is a pearl’s basic information?
Basic information on pearls.
Pearls are dense concretions formed in several species of mollusks as a result of the polymerization of layers of nacre inside or underneath the sheath around foreign particles that are not attached to the outer shell.
Pearls come in a variety of shapes, most typically round and pear-shaped.
Pearls come in a variety of colors, usually white or light, and have varying degrees of luster. Pearls are used for decoration or as medicine.
What is a pearl’s chemical composition?
The inorganic components of pearls are mainly calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate, accounting for more than 91%, followed by silicon oxide, calcium phosphate, Al2O3, and Fe2O3.
Organic matter in pearls Contains 17 kinds of amino acids such as aspartic acid, threonine, serine, glutamic acid, glycine, alanine, cystine, valine, methionine, isoleucine, leucine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, histidine, arginine, proline and so on.
In addition, pearls contain more than 30 kinds of trace elements, taurine, rich vitamins, and peptides.
What is a pearl’s shape?
Pearls come in a variety of shapes, including round, pear, egg, teardrop, button, and in all shapes of pearls, pearl with round being the best. Non-homogenous.
Natural pearls are round, oval, irregular spherical, or oblong, 1 to 6 mm in diameter.
Surface white, yellowish white, light pink, light blue, etc., with beautiful colored luster, smooth. Made of decorative pearls, most of the center has a perforation.
The quality of hard, difficult to break, and the section is laminated. Burned with fire with cracking sound. No gas tastes slightly salty.
Cultivated pearls are similar in shape to natural pearls, but the surface luster is weaker, and there are round grains of sand or crushed grains of cassia in the center of the cross-section, and there is a book of real pearl layer on the surface.
Only the true pearl layer is used in medicine.
What are the natural pearl colors?
The colors of natural pearls are white, pink, gold, green, blue, brown, mauve, black, and so on, with white as the main color.
Types of pearls colors
Pearls of the hue of white-based can appear milky, bright yellow, bright rose color, mixed colors, and so on;
Pearls of the tone of black-based can appear gray, bronze, dark blue, blue-green, green, and other shades.
Colored pearls’ colors
Colored pearls are pearls other than white and black, usually blue, in addition, there are red, purple, light yellow, lilac purple, green and other colors.
What is a pearl’s luster?
Pearls are with variable halo color.
Natural pearl hardness of 2.5 ~ 4.5, the relative density of 2.6 ~ 2.78. Artificial cultured, the relative density of 2.72 ~ 2.78. Pearls dissolved in acid, drops of dilute hydrochloric acid blistering.
What is a pearl’s Luminescence and absorption spectra?
Under ultraviolet long-wave or short-wave irradiation, natural pearls fluoresce (bright blue, light yellow, light green, pink, and other colors), cultured pearls sometimes fluoresce (the same as natural pearls), and sometimes do not fluoresce.
How are pearls formed?
What is a pearl formation principle?
How real pearls are made?
Mussels coat the membrane by a foreign body (sand, parasites) invasion of stimulation, stimulation of the epidermal cells at the foreign body for the nucleus, into the connective tissue of the coat membrane, into the part of the coat membrane epidermal cells split to form the pearl capsule.
Pearl capsule cells secretion nacreous, layer after layer of the nucleus encapsulated into the pearl. Foreign matter as the nucleus is called a nucleated pearl.
How is mother-of-pearl made?
After the outer epidermis of the outer coat membrane is stimulated by pathology, a part of it undergoes cell division and then separates, and then encapsulates the organic material secreted by itself, and gradually falls into the connective tissue of the outer coat membrane, forming a mother-of-pearl sac and then forming a pearl.
Since there is no foreign body as the nucleus, it is called a nucleus-less pearl.
What are artificially cultured pearls?
Artificially cultured pearls are based on the above principles, with artificial methods, from the pearl mussels coat membrane cut live epithelial cells, and mussel shells prepared with the artificial nucleus, implanted with the mussel’s coat membrane connective tissue, implanted cells, relying on the connective tissue to provide the nutrients around the artificial nucleus proliferate rapidly, the formation of the pearl capsule, the secretion of pearl quality, thus generating artificial nucleated pearls.
Artificial non-nucleated pearls are the application of the outer coat membrane, only implanted small pieces of cells, through cell proliferation to form a pearl sac, and to the sac of secretion of nacreous pearls, the generation of pearls.
How is a pearl formed?
When the external small foreign objects into the pearl mussel, the outer coat membrane will be stimulated to secrete nacreous, layer by layer to wrap the foreign body, and gradually form a pearl. The mother-of-pearl is the pearl shell, abalone, clams, mussels, etc. can produce pearls.
How mother-of-pearl is made?
Pearl mother is pearl shell, all pearl shell is a special class of cells, distributed in the outer layer of the outer coat membrane, outward secretion of nacreous this special substance. As the age of the pearl shell increases, the cells continue to grow, the nacreous shell secretes more and more, and the shell will continue to increase in size.
What is a pearl’s characteristic?
Pearls are generally round in shape, the surface has fine holes, and the naked eye can see the multi-colored luster, such as the seven-color rainbow is generally colorful, crystalline, and beautiful, placed in the sunlight presents a translucent shape, the texture of the full.
Which shellfish produces pearls?
Pearl-producing shellfish include Pteria martensii (Dunker), or bivalves such as the mussel Hyriopsis cumingii (Lea) and Cristaria plicata (Leach), which are members of the mussel family.
How do pearls grow?
Nursery: around 2.5-3 years – Mother-of-pearl matures
Growing: around 2-3 years – pearl grows to about 5mm-7mm
Among them, the nacre is secreted 3-5 times a day, and each time it is secreted it covers a thickness of only 0.3μm.
The thickness of the pearl layer in one year of cultivation is only about 0.3mm, and it will take about 3 years to grow to a thickness of 1mm before it can be grown into a jewel-grade pearl. In other words, three years of culturing results in thousands of layers of nacre.
Types of pearls
Here list three different types of pearls, they are different types of pearls from different conditions, different types of pearls from different formations, and different types of pearls from different shells.
The different types of pearls from different conditions
From the growth environment classification pearls are divided into two categories, freshwater pearls and saltwater pearls.
Freshwater pearls refer to freshwater mussels produce pearls, produced in various types of lakes, rivers and streams, about 95% of the world’s freshwater pearls are produced in China.
Color common white, pink, orange, purple and other rich colors, shapes vary, most are not round, less round, most of the oval, flat round, rice type, girdle type, shaped and so on.
Saltwater pearls refer to pearls produced by saltwater shellfish, produced in the sea, saltwater pearls according to different subdivided types, there are produced in China, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia, French Polynesia and other major countries.
Common colors include white, gold, silver gray, translucent green and other rich colors. Sea water pearls are generally very round, a small number of oval, girdle type, shaped.
The different types of pearls from different formations
From the formation of the cause of classification pearls are divided into wild and cultured, the cultured pearls are including non-nucleated cultured and nucleated cultured.
Wild pearls also known as natural pearls.
Cultured pearls are cultured mussels.
Most freshwater pearls are cultured without nucleus, the method is to cut off a small piece of the outer coat membrane of the mussel, implanted in the outer coat membrane connective of the pearl mussel, to stimulate its secretion of nacreous, from the cultured mussel – planting the membrane – harvesting pearls, it generally takes 3-5 years of time.
Most saltwater pearls are cultured with nuclei. The method is to implant a round nucleus in the mother mussel and stimulate its secretion of nacreous material to wrap the nucleus, so it is better to form a round shape, and it takes 3-5 years from cultured mussel-planting nucleus-harvesting pearl.
General saltwater pearls need 3-6 years, and saltwater pearls in the Tahitian pearls, South Sea pearls, generally need 5-6 years.
The different types of pearls from different shells
From the breeding mother-of-pearl shell classification it has 8 types of pearls.
1. Triangle sail mussel pearl is the main variety of freshwater cultured pearls, accounting for more than 95% of the market.
2. Mahi-mahi shell pearls, also commonly known as akoya pearls, are very small in size, 90% of the mother-of-pearl of saltwater cultured pearls is Mahi-mahi shell. This kind of pearl is the most common saltwater cultured pearls in the market.
3. Penguin shell Mabe pearls belong to the sea water pearls, this kind of pearl particles are larger, suitable for cultivation of nucleated pearls or large shelled pearls, the quality is also better, but the yield is lower.
4. White mother-of-pearl shell pearl is the world’s largest of the cultured mother of pearl, body size for the Marsupial shell of 30 times, so generally can breed larger saltwater pearls, we often hear of white Nanyang pearl is produced in this shell, generally more than 10 millimeters in diameter.
5. Gold lip shell pearl, golden Nanyang pearl is produced here, can produce different shades of gold pearl, generally more than 9 mm.
6. Black mother-of-pearl shell pearls are larger, more than 90% from French Polynesia, Tahiti, the output of the pearl color black, gray, blue, green, and brown, etc., because most of the color for the darker system, so people often called the black pearl, diameter are generally more than 9 mm.
7. Conch pearls produced in a Caribbean Sea inhabited by a large pink conch body, beads are usually pink, the middle of the white or brown, they have a unique flame-like surface traces of the quality of the shape is usually oval, side symmetry.
8. Abalone pearls, in the abalone body production of pearls, colorful, and the color of the Australian treasure, there are green, orchid, pink, yellow and other color combinations, its form is not the same, the very high quality of abalone pearl value is very high.
A variety of other different pearl-producing mother mussels also include pleated crown mussel pearls, the solution of mother-of-pearl, wide pearl mussels, dorsal tumor Li mussels, pool butterfly mussels, and a variety of other, due to less widely used or not representative, will not be described in detail.
What is a pearl grading guide?
Grades and Classification of Pearls
What are the different grades of pearls?
Pearl shape grade is divided into six levels, respectively, A1, A2, A3, B, C, D. A1 is the highest grade of pearl shape, the requirement of saltwater pearls to be less than equal to 1% difference in diameter, freshwater pearls to be less than equal to 3% difference in diameter.
Pearls have four levels of luster. A-class pearls reflect light brightly, the surface like a mirror, the reflection is clear, B-class pearls reflect light brightly, the surface can be impression, C-class pearls reflect light is not bright, the reflection is fuzzy, D-class pearls reflect light weakly, almost no reflection.
Pearls are divided into five grades of finish, A grade for flawless level, the surface of the pearl is delicate and smooth, the naked eye can not see the flaws, B grade for micro-flawed level, the surface of the needle-like flaws, C-grade pearls have tiny flaws visible to the naked eye, D-grade has a large area of obvious flaws, E-grade pearls can account for a quarter of the surface of the blemishes.
What is a pearl used for?
Pearls have a wide range of uses.
As jewelry, since ancient times, its luster has been flashing in the emperor’s crown, noblewoman’s decorations, Buddha’s throne.
Now with the increasingly sophisticated technology, pearls can be made into jewelry alone, but also with a variety of gemstones, precious metals to match the inlay into a variety of precious jewelry.
Her noble, pure and elegant, become the top choice of investment collection of treasures.
In addition, the pearl has a high medicinal value, because the pearl contains a large number of amino acids and active calcium and other essential components of the human body, has a calm and tranquilize the mind, clearing heat and detoxification, eyesight calcium, etc. Frightened, with the pearl into the medicine to cure the disease in China has a long history.
Pearls can also enhance cellular vitality, delay cellular aging, is beauty, skin care, skin care products, popular among women.
What is a pearl care and cleaning guide?
Pearl with its warmth, elegant and clean, magnificent, has always been loved by people, known as the queen of jewelry. Pearls are composed of calcium carbonate containing mechanism, chemical stability is poor, can be dissolved in acid, alkali, daily life is not suitable for contact with perfume, oil, salt, alcohol, hair milk, vinegar and dirt; more can not contact with organic solvents such as banana water;
In summer, the human body sweats a lot, it is not suitable to wear pearl necklaces, when not in use, use soft and slightly wet clean cotton cloth to wipe clean and air-dry to save, do not use any cleaning agent to clean;
Not in the sun or baking; collection can not be put together with mothballs, and do not put in the bank vault for a long time.
Pearl’s hardness is low, wearing a long time the white pearl will be yellowing, so that the luster deterioration, available 1% – 1.5% hydrogen peroxide bleaching, pay attention to not bleach over the head, otherwise it will lose its luster.
Why are my pearls turning yellow?
Why does it happen? Pearl jewelry usually turns yellow as time passes because they dry out.
This means that pearls have a lifespan and yellowing is a sign of aging.
If there is no air circulation and moisture where pearls are kept, their organic composition begins to change, which results in that yellowing.
Pearls are nurtured by the pearl mussel, its luster and bead body have a certain life expectancy. Although the life expectancy is longer than a person, exposed to the air for a long time in the pearl layer by oxidation, from white to yellow.
A pearl has about a hundred years of opportunity to display its luster.
How do you clean pearls that have yellowed?
To use acetone to whiten yellowed pearls, first, clean them as usual. Then moisten a clean cloth with acetone nail polish remover and gently wipe each pearl to remove the yellow staining.
Never use acetone on fake pearls; it will ruin them. Real pearls are organic, which means their color is subject to change.
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