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Gabriel's Wing
offers a range of superb
pearl jewellery, including earrings, necklaces and bracelets, both
cultured and fresh water, and of various types including baroque.
Pearl jewellery always makes a wonderful birthday or anniversary
gift.
Click here to see all pearl jewellery, or
scroll down this page, or browse through each category on the left.
What are pearls? They are hard, round
objects produced by oysters. Pearls have long been valued as
gemstones and cultivated or harvested for use in jewellery.
Natural pearls form when a small foreign particle - even a
grain of sand, becomes trapped in the gonad or mantle tissue of an
oyster. Pearl diving used to be the favourite way of harvesting
pearls. Divers would pull oysters from the floor of the oceans
and rivers and they would examine them individually for pearls. But
not all natural oysters produce pearls. It would take nearly one ton
of oysters to obtain a handful of perfect round pearls, making
them very scarce, and of course, valuable. Pearl oysters were
collected by the Sumerians in the Persian Gulf as long ago as 4000
years. The Bahrain Pearl Banks along the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf
of Manaar in Ceylon were renowned for their lovely natural pearls.
The Japanese pearl divers were women, known as "Ama" ('sea women)'.
Ama still dive without modern equipment - these 'free' divers often
swim as deep as 100 feet with a single breath of air. Even though
the traditional source of pearls has been saltwater mollusks, it is
also the case that freshwater mussels, living in lakes, ponds, and
rivers, can also produce pearls. The Chinese have harvested
freshwater pearls since the 13th century, and are now leaders in
freshwater pearl supply. Pearls in China are recorded from 2206 BC.
Freshwater pearls tend to be less round than saltwater pearls, and
may not have the same sharp lustre and shine as akoya pearls. Yet
they have a beauty of their own, and are found in a range of
shapes and natural colours. They are extremely strong and resistant
to chipping, thus making them excellent for use in jewellery. The
quality nowadays of freshwater pearls is very good .Today's cultured
pearls are the result of improvements made in the19th and early 20th
centuries by Japanese researchers. Although some cultures had long
been able to artificially stimulate molluscs into producing a type
of pearl, the pearls produced in this way were only blister, rather
than actual round pearls. What teh Japanese discovered was a new
technique for encouraging the formation of a round pearl
inside the oyster. This technique was patented by Kokichi Mikimoto
and the first harvest of round pearls was produced in 1916. |
