How Are Pearls Made? The Making of A Pearl
How are pearls made? This and, what is the difference between a natural and a cultured pearl, may be the two most frequent questions I am asked about pearls. As it happens, the answers are closely related.
The formation of a pearl begins when an irritant becomes lodged inside a pearl producing oyster or mussel. Contrary to popular belief this irritant is almost never sand. Oysters and mussels are exceptionally efficient at filtering and expelling sand grains. For natural pearls the most common irritants are shell pieces, bone fragments or some kind of boring parasite that become stuck in the mollusk’s soft mantle tissue. In cultured pearls the irritant — usually a combination of a shell bead nucleus and a splice of mantle tissue for saltwater pearls or mantle tissue alone for most freshwater pearls — is surgically implanted by highly skilled technicians.
So, what is the difference between natural pearls and cultured pearls?
- Natural pearls are created when a random irritant becomes lodged in a wild oyster, thereby stimulating the natural process of pearl creation
- Natural pearls are solid nacre pearls, meaning they are comprised entirely of the natural secretions an oyster uses in pearl formation
- Cultured pearls result when an irritant is deliberately inserted into the oyster or mussel with the specific intent of stimulating the natural processes associated with pearl formation.
- Cultured pearls – Cultured saltwater pearls including Akoya, Tahitian and South Sea pearls — are
started by inserting a shell bead nucleus and a sliver of mantle tissue into the oyster gonad. The resulting pearl, therefore, is not solid nacre but rather thousands of layers of nacre around a center bead. Think of the shell bead as the center of a Tootsie Pop and the nacre layers as the candy coating. - Cultured pearls are grown in wild harvested or, more often today, hatchery nurtured stocks of oysters.
- 99.9% of genuine pearls sold today are cultured pearls. Natural pearls are museum and connoisseur pieces that fetch soaring prices in a market dominated by wealthy collectors in the Middle East.
Whether natural or cultured the process of making a pearl is the same. Oysters are meticulous caretakers of their internal environments. They like it clean and tidy. If an irritant cannot be expelled the oyster seeks to minimize the discomfort posed by the intruder. And this is when the magic takes place.
Here’s what goes down when a pearl is formed:
- The oyster first quarantines the invader inside a pearl sac.
- It then covers the pearl sac in layers of of nacre.
- Nacre (rhymes with baker) is the same secretion the mollusk uses for shell building. When the secretion is used on the shell it is called mother of pearl. When it is used to create a pearl it is called nacre.
- Chemically, the initial layers of nacre are conchiolin with all subsequent layers comprised of calcium aragonite crystals.
- Depending on water temperature and the availability of food, an oyster will cover its pearl in 2 to 5 layers of nacre every day.
- The true beauty of a pearl is determined by its luster, or the deep inner glow that emanates from the pearl. Pearls with high luster are characterized by thick nacre whose many crystal layers are aligned in such a way as to allow absorption and refraction of light.
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Tags: Cultured Pearls, How Pearls are Made, Nacre, Natural Pearls