Iridescent Pearl

The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth with iridescent luster. The fine quality natural pearls has high value as gemstone and other objects of beauty for many centuries. So the pearl becomes a metaphor to express something very nice, very rare, very attractive and very valuable.

Actually a pearl is a hard, round or nearly round object. It is produced in the soft tissue, a kind of living shelled mollusk. It is composed of calcium carbonate. The tiny crystalline form has been deposited in concentric layers. So normally the pearl is round, but many other shapes also may be produced, even with baroque on it.

By natural process, most shelled mollusk can produce the pearl. When a microscopic object is trapped in the mantle layers of the mollusk during its breathing, the object will be wrapped by the mantle folds and enlarged day by day. Though a pearl is not as valuable as a gemstone, the common demand of the pearls is higher than gemstones.

The pearls are produced quite different. Some are in the sea, some are in the freshwater. The former one is produced in the pearl oysters, while the latter one is produced in the river mussels. They are two groups of mollusk bivalves or clams. A natural pearl is one that formed without any human intervention at all, in the wild, and is very rare. A cultured pearl, on the other hand, is one that has been formed on a pearl farm. The great majority of pearls on the market are cultured pearls.

These various varieties of bivalves are able to make iridescent pearls because they have a thick iridescent inner shell layer called mother of pearl which is composed of nacre. A nacreous pearl is made from layers of nacre, by the same living process as is used in the secretion of the mother of pearl. The mantle folds of a bivalve can produce a pearl in the same way which produces the pearly layer of the shell.

High quality salt water and freshwater pearls can be fetched completely naturally in the wild. Actually, in order to fetch a wild pearl, hundreds of pearl oysters or mussels have to be gathered and opened to kill, even if there is no pearls inside. Maybe that is the only way pearls can obtain. So the quantity of the oysters and mussels is reduced, the pearls fetched from the wild is less and less. This is the main reason why pearls is sold at such expensive prices in the past. In modern times, however, almost all the pearls for sale were produced with a good breeding from cultured pearl farms.

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pearl necklace or loose pearl beads. Join in and see more.

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Orignal From: Iridescent Pearl