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Info: Biography, Pictures, Discography of all CDs & DVDs |
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| Art Markers Singles Prismacolor, Copic, AD, Tria ....Winter 2008 Back to School Sale at www.Winter 2008 Back to School Sale at www.For other uses, see Pearl (disambiguation).Just like the shell of mollusks, a pearl is composed of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers.The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes of pearls occur, see baroque pearl.The finest quality pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty for many centuries, and the word pearl has become a metaphor for something rare, fine, and admirable.Biologically speaking, under the right set of circumstances, almost any shelled mollusk can produce some kind of "pearl", however, most of these molluscan "pearls" have no luster or iridescence.In fact the great majority of mollusk species produce pearls which are not attractive to look at, and are sometimes not even very durable, such that they usually have no value at all, except perhaps to a scientist, or as a curiosity.These objects would be referred to as "calcareous concretions" by a gemologist, even though a malacologist would still consider them to be pearls.However, true iridescent pearls, the most desirable pearls, are all produced by two groups of molluscan bivalves or clams.One family lives in the sea: the pearl oysters.The other, very different group of bivalves live in freshwater and these are the river mussels, for example, see the freshwater pearl mussel.Saltwater pearls can grow in several species of marine pearl oysters in the family Pteriidae.Freshwater pearls grow within certain (but by no means all) species of freshwater mussels in the order Unionida, the families Unionidae and Margaritiferidae.All of these bivalves are able to make true pearls because they have a thick inner shell layer composed of "mother of pearl" or nacre.The mantle of the living bivalve can create a pearl in the same way that it creates the pearly inner layer of the shell.Fine gem quality saltwater and freshwater pearls can and do sometimes occur completely naturally, but this is a rare occurrence.Many hundreds of pearl oysters or pearl mussels have to be gathered and opened (killed) in order to find even one pearl, and for many centuries that was the only way pearls were obtained.This was the main reason why pearls fetched such extraordinary prices in the past.In modern times however, almost all the pearls for sale were formed with a good deal of expert intervention from human pearl farmers.The great majority of pearls on the market are cultured pearls.Imitation or fake pearls are also widely sold in inexpensive jewelry, but the quality of the iridescence is usually very poor, and generally speaking, fake pearls are usually quite easy to distinguish from the real thing.True pearls have long been greatly valued as gemstones.They have been harvested, or more recently cultivated, primarily for use in jewelry but were also historically worn stitched onto lavish clothing as worn, for example, by royalty.Pearls have also been crushed and used in cosmetics, medicines, or in paint formulations.Pearl is considered to be the birthstone for June.Physical properties
2 Freshwater and saltwater pearls
2.Creation of a pearl
2.Value of a natural pearl
2.Origin of a natural pearl
2.Largest pearl
4 History
5 Jewelry
6 Religious references
6.Akoya pearl grafting shed in Xuwen, China.The unique luster of pearls depends upon the reflection and refraction of light from the translucent layers.The thinner and more numerous the layers in the pearl, the finer the luster.The iridescence that pearls display is caused by the overlapping of successive layers, which breaks up light falling on the surface.Pearls are often white or cream, but the color can vary quite a lot according to the natural color of the nacre in the various species of mollusk used.Thus pearls can also be black, or various pastel shades.In addition, pearls (especially freshwater pearls) can be dyed yellow, green, blue, brown, pink, purple, or black.Freshwater and saltwater pearls
Freshwater and saltwater pearls may sometimes look quite similar but they come from very different sources.Freshwater pearls are formed in various species of freshwater mussels (Unionidae), which live in lakes, rivers, ponds and other bodies of fresh water.These freshwater pearl mussels occur not only in hotter climates but also in colder more temperate areas such as Scotland, see freshwater pearl mussel.However, most freshwater cultured pearls sold today come from China.Saltwater pearls grow within pearl oysters (Pteriidae) which live in tropical oceans.Saltwater pearl oysters are usually cultivated in protected lagoons.The three main types of saltwater pearls are Akoya, South Sea and Tahitian.Pearls are formed inside the shell of certain bivalve mollusks.As a response to an irritant inside its shell, the mollusk creates a pearl to seal off the irritation.The commonly held belief that a grain of sand acts as the irritant is in fact rarely the case.In cultured pearls, the irritant is typically a cut piece of the mantle epithelium, together with processed shell beads, the combination of which the animal accepts into its body.Cross section illustration showing natural and cultured pearls.It is thought that natural pearls form under a set of accidental conditions when a microscopic intruder or parasite enters a bivalve mollusk, and settles inside the shell.The mollusk, being irritated by the intruder, secretes the calcium carbonate substance called nacre to cover the irritant.This secretion process is repeated many times, thus producing a pearl.Natural pearls come in many shapes, with round ones being comparatively rare.Gemological identification
A well equipped gem testing laboratory is able to separate natural pearls from cultured pearls by examining the center of a pearl, and the growth rings separated by conchiolin layers.All natural and cultured pearls can be distinguished from imitation pearls using a microscope.Another accurate method of testing for imitations is to rub the pearl against the surface of a front tooth.Imitation pearls are completely smooth, but natural and cultured pearls are composed of nacre platelets, which feel slightly gritty.Value of a natural pearl
Quality natural pearls are very rare jewels.The actual value of a natural pearl is determined in the same way as it would be for other "precious" gems.Single natural pearls are often sold as a collector's item, or set as centerpieces in unique jewelry.Very few matched strands of natural pearls exist, and those that do often sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.Keshi pearls, although they often occur by chance, are not considered natural pearls.These pearls are quite small: typically a few millimeters in size.Keshi pearls are produced by many different types of marine mollusks and freshwater mussels in China.Present day natural pearling is confined mostly to seas off Bahrain.Australia also has one of the world's last remaining fleets of pearl diving ships.Australian pearl divers dive for south sea pearl oysters to be used in the cultured south sea pearl industry.The catch of pearl oysters is similar to the numbers of oysters taken during the natural pearl days.Black pearls, frequently referred to as Black Tahitian Pearls, are highly valued because of their rarity; the culturing process for them dictates a smaller volume output and can never be mass produced.Before the days of cultured pearls, black pearls were rare and highly valued for the simple reason that white pearl oysters rarely produced natural black pearls, and black pearl oysters rarely produced any natural pearls at all.The rarity of the black cultured pearl is now a "comparative" issue.The black cultured pearl is rare when compared to Chinese freshwater cultured pearls, and Japanese and Chinese Akoya cultured pearls, and is more valuable than these pearls.However, it is more abundant than the south sea pearl, which is more valuable than the black cultured pearl.NOT south sea pearls, although they are often mistakenly described as black south sea pearls.In the absence of an official definition for the pearl from the black oyster, these pearls are usually referred to as "black Tahitian pearls".Pinctada maxima pearl oyster.In other words, gemologically speaking, it is not considered to be a pearl, although biologically speaking it is one.Later, a Palawan chieftain gave the pearl to Wilbur Dowell Cobb in 1936 as a gift for having saved the life of his son.The pearl had been named the "Pearl of Allah" by the Muslim tribal chief, because it resembled a turbaned head.Tzu, a cultured mabe pearl created with a carved amulet and progressively grafted into several giant clams, but then lost due to a shipwreck in 1745, only to be rediscovered in 1934.The pearl is the product of a giant clam, Tridacna gigas, which cannot be grafted.The pearl is also a whole pearl, not a mabe, and whole pearl culturing technology is only 100 years old.History
For thousands of years, most seawater pearls were retrieved by divers working in the Indian Ocean, in areas like the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and in the Gulf of Mannar (by the ancient Tamils).When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Western Hemisphere, they discovered that around the islands of Cubagua and Margarita, some 200 km north of the Venezuelan coast, was an extensive bed of pearls.This pearl later became very famous when Richard Burton purchased it for his wife Elizabeth Taylor.Margarita pearls are extremely difficult to find today and are known for their unique yellowish color.Before the beginning of the 20th Century, pearl hunting was the most common way of harvesting pearls.Divers manually pulled oysters from ocean floors and river bottoms and checked them individually for pearls.Not all natural oysters produce pearls.However, almost all pearls used for jewelry are cultured by planting a core or nucleus into pearl oysters.This mariculture process was first developed by Tatsuhei Mise and Tokichi Nishikawa in Japan.Along with a small piece of mantle tissue from another mollusk to serve as a catalyst for the pearl sac, it is surgically implanted into the gonad (reproductive organ) of a saltwater mollusk.In freshwater perliculture, only the piece of tissue is used in most cases, and is inserted into the fleshy mantle of the host mussel.Despite the common misperception, Mikimoto did not patent the process of pearl culture.The accepted process of pearl culture was developed by a team of scientists at Tokyo University between 1907 and 1916.The team was headed by Tokichi Nishikawa and Tatsuhei Mise.After the patent was granted in 1916, the technology was immediately commercially applied to akoya pearl oysters in Japan in 1916.Mise's brother was the first to produce a commercial crop of pearls in the akoya oyster.Mitsubishi's Baron Iwasaki immediately applied the technology to the south sea pearl oyster in 1917 in the Philippines, and later in Buton, and Palau.The original Japanese cultured pearls, known as akoya pearls, are produced by a species of small oysters, Pinctada fucata martensii, no bigger than 6 to 7 cm in size, hence akoya pearls larger than 10 mm in diameter are extremely rare and highly prized.Today a hybrid mollusk is used in both Japan and China in the production of akoya pearls.China has recently overtaken Japan in akoya pearl production.Japan has all but ceased its production of akoya pearls smaller than 8mm.Japan maintains its status as a pearl processing center, however, and imports the majority of Chinese akoya pearl production.These pearls are then processed (often simply matched and sorted), relabeled as product of Japan, and exported.In the past couple of decades, cultured pearls have been produced with larger oysters in the south Pacific and Indian Ocean.The largest pearl oyster is the Pinctada maxima, which is roughly the size of a dinner plate.South Sea pearls are characterized by their large size and silvery color.Australia is one of the most important sources of South Sea pearls.Mitsubishi commenced pearl culture with the south sea pearl oyster in 1916 as soon as the technology patent was commercialized.By 1931 this project was showing signs of success, but was upset by the death of Tatsuhei.Although the project was recommenced after Tatsuhei's death, the project was discontinued at the beginning of WWII before significant productions of pearls were achieved.After WWII, new south sea pearl projects were commenced in the early 1950s in Burma and Kuri Bay and Port Essington in Australia.Despite often being described as black south sea pearls, Tahitian pearls are not south sea pearls.The correct definition of a south sea pearl is "the pearl produced by the Pinctada maxima pearl oyster."In 1914, pearl farmers began culturing freshwater pearls using the pearl mussels native to Lake Biwa.This lake, the largest and most ancient in Japan, lies near the city of Kyoto.The extensive and successful use of the Biwa Pearl Mussel is reflected in the name Biwa pearls, a phrase which was at one time nearly synonymous with freshwater pearls in general.Since the time of peak production in 1971, when Biwa pearl farmers produced six tons of cultured pearls, pollution and overharvesting have caused the virtual extinction of this animal.This industry closed in 2006 due to lake pollution.Led by pearl pioneer John Latendresse and his wife Chessy, the United States began farming freshwater cultured pearls in the mid 1960's.National Geographic Magazine introduced the American cultured pearl as a commercial product in their August 1985 issue.The Tennessee pearl farm has emerged as a tourist destination in recent years.In the 1990s, Japanese pearl producers also invested in producing cultured pearls with freshwater mussels in the region of Shanghai, China, and in Fiji.Freshwater pearls are characterized by the reflection of rainbow colors in the luster.Cultured pearls are also produced using abalone.The value of the pearls in jewelry is determined by a combination of the luster, color, size, lack of surface flaw and symmetry that are appropriate for the type of pearl under consideration.Among those attributes, luster is the most important differentiator of pearl quality according to jewelers.All factors being equal, however, the larger the pearl the more valuable it is.Large, perfectly round pearls are rare and highly valued.Perfectly round pearls are the rarest and most valuable shape.Button pearls are like a slightly flattened round pearl and can also make a necklace, but are more often used in single pendants or earrings where the back half of the pearl is covered, making it look like a larger, round pearl.Drop and pear shaped pearls are sometimes referred to as teardrop pearls and are most often seen in earrings, pendants, or as a center pearl in a necklace.Baroque pearls have a different appeal to them than more standard shapes because they are often highly irregular and make unique and interesting shapes.Circled pearls are characterized by concentric ridges, or rings, around the body of the pearl.In general, cultured pearls are less valuable than natural pearls, and imitation pearls are less valuable than cultured pearls.If no nucleus is present, but irregular and small dark inner spots indicating a cavity are visible, combined with concentric rings of organic substance, the pearl is likely a cultured freshwater.Cultured freshwater pearls can often be confused for natural pearls which present as homogeneous pictures which continuously darken toward the surface of the pearl.Natural pearls will often show larger cavities where organic matter has dried out and decomposed.Although imitation pearls look the part, they do not have the same weight or smoothness as real pearls, and their luster will also dim greatly.There is also a unique way of naming pearl necklaces.While most other necklaces are simply referred to by their physical measurement, strings of pearls have their own set of names that characterize the pearls based on where they hang when worn around the neck.Pearl chokers nestle just at the base of the neck.The size called a princess comes down to or just below the collarbone.An opera will be long enough to reach the breastbone or sternum of the wearer, and longer still, a pearl rope is any length that falls down farther than an opera.In a uniform strand of pearls, all pearls are classified as the same size, but actually fall in a range.So a strand will never be 7 mm, but will be 6.Freshwater pearls, Tahitian pearls, and South Sea pearls all measure to a full millimeter when considered uniform.Popularized in the 1950s by the GIs bringing strands of cultured akoya pearls home from Japan, the graduated style was much more affordable as most pearls in any given strand were small.Earrings and necklaces can also be classified on the grade of the color of the pearl.Religious references
According to Rebbenu Bachya, the word Yahalom in the verse Exodus 28:18 means "pearl" and was the stone on the Hoshen representing the tribe of Zebulun.The Circle is a symbol of God, it has no beginning and no end.The circle or pearl was considered to represent Love, Knowledge (the combination of equal amounts of Love and Knowledge is a symbol of Wisdom, the 2 circles intertwined (owl eyes) is symbolic of Wisdom.Some other pearls are Truth, and Faith.The twelve gates of the New Jerusalem are reportedly each made of a single pearl in Revelation 21:21, that is, the Pearly Gates."And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass."Pearls are compared to holy things, in Matthew 7: 6."Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.""And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!"Islamic references
In Islam, the Koran often mentions that dwellers of paradise will be adorned with pearls:
22:23 God will admit those who believe and work righteous deeds, to Gardens beneath which rivers flow: they shall be adorned therein with bracelets of gold and pearls; and their garments there will be of silk.Gardens of Eternity will they enter: therein will they be adorned with bracelets of gold and pearls; and their garments there will be of silk.Like unto preserved pearls.Hindu astrological belief in natural pearls
The Vedic tradition describes the sacred Nine Pearls which were first documented in the Garuda Purana, one of the books of the Hindu holy text Atharvaveda.Ayurveda contains references to pearl powder as a stimulant of digestion and to treat mental ailments.According to Marco Polo the kings of Malabar (now known as the Coromandel Coast) wore a necklace of 104 rubies and 104 precious pearls which was given from one generation of kings to the next.At least until the beginning of the 20th century it was a Hindu custom to present a completely new, undrilled pearl and pierce it during the ceremony.Landman, et al (2001) Pearls: A Natural History, Harry Abrams, Inc."Keshi Perlen: Ein Erklarungbedurftiger Begriff (Keshi Pearls a term in need of explanation".History of The Pearl of Allah).Pearl Weight and The Pearl of Lao Tzu.Fred Ward, (2002) Pearls (Fred Ward Gem Book), 3rd Edition,Gem Guides Book Company, pgs.The History of Pearls.PBS Pearl History Special.This page was last modified 21:52, 13 January 2008.Pearl is an album by Janis Joplin, released on February 1, 1971, just four months after her death from a heroin overdose.It is her fourth album and the only album she recorded with the Full Tilt Boogie Band.Rothchild was best known as the producer of The Doors, and worked well with Joplin.The iconic album cover shows Joplin reclining on her Victorian loveseat with a drink in her hand, conveying that this is Janis Joplin as she really is.Pearl with extra tracks was released August 31, 1999.In 2003, the album was ranked number 122 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.Over 42,000 happy customers have chosen
PearlsOnly as their choice for pearls.Beautiful pearl rings, fun and elegant.We are a F2C (Farm to Consumer) pearl company.What makes us different, is that we not only deliver the best quality pearls on the market at the best prices, but we do so with world class GIA Educated Customer Care, friendly telephone support, gorgeous packaging, and free FedEx shipping.Donna Hilbert, John Kay, Lyn Lifshin, Gerald Locklin, Wilma E.Harper Webb, Mark Weber, Lesley Wheeler, Bob Zappacosta, and many more.Heidi Rosenberg, winners of the Pearl Short Story Prize.Locklin, Frances Ruhlen McConnel, Fred McGavran, Suzanne Rivecca, and others.Hilbert, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Ron Koertge, Gerald Locklin, Wilma E.Pierstorff, Fred Voss and many more.Information on Buying and Selling Pearl District's best lofts and condos.View Pearl District services on a map.Get automatic updates when new Pearl properties come on the market.The Pearl District Group, Willamette Realty Group, 612 NW 12th Ste.The Pearl District Group.SiteCatalyst code version: H. |
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