Pearl Jewelry - The Timeless And Elegant All-Occasion Jewelry

Pearl jewelry is timeless and elegant as well as hip and modern. They are often preferred by many because they are simply the most elegant adornment to finish off every outfit for every occasion. Pearl has been valued as objects of beauty and became a metaphor for something very admirable, very valuable, very fine and very rare. Pearl is the June birthstone and is also considered as a symbol showing deep love.

A pearl is a hard, roundish object produced within the soft tissue of a living shelled mollusk. It is secreted by the epithelial cells of the mantle, a curtain of tissue between the shell and body mass. It is made up of calcium carbonate, which is also a common substance found in rocks and shells of mollusks. Calcium carbonate found in pearls is in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers.

A pearl is formed inside when a parasite or an irritating microscopic object becomes trapped within the mollusk's mantle folds. The mollusk, being irritated by the intruder, secretes the calcium carbonate and conchiolin to cover the irritant. This process is referred to as encystation, which eventually forms a pearl. This secretion process continues such that the pearl keeps increasing in size, as long as the animal lives.

Nacre, also known as mother of pearl, is an inner shell layer that is strong, resilient and iridescent. Secretion of nacre around the irritating object builds a pearl within the body of the mollusk. But not all mollusks have nacre, some mollusks have an inner shell layer that is porcellaneous. This type of mollusk can also produce pearls, which may even be highly valued commercially.

There are freshwater pearls and saltwater pearls. Freshwater pearls, as the name suggests, are a kind of pearl that comes from freshwater mussels. Saltwater pearls are produced by several species of marine pearl oysters. Pearls from the sea are valued highly than freshwater pearls.

Pearls can be cultured or farmed, but valuable pearls are those that occur in the wild. Culturing or farming of pearls has become successful because of its scarcity. Cultured pearls are pearls grown in pearl-producing mollusks with the aid of human intervention. These are also considered genuine pearls as they do not differ from their natural pearl counterparts.

There are saltwater cultured pearls and freshwater cultured pearls. Saltwater cultured pearls are pearls cultured in a saline environment. They are produced by introducing a rounded bead of freshwater mussel shell into the gonad of a host mollusk. Freshwater cultured pearls are produced by creating small incisions to the mantle organ of a host mussel.

Pearls come in a various shapes. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth. Other shapes is rice-shaped, pear-shaped, irregular (baroque) or button-shaped. Pearl gemstones are valued for their luster, translucence and for the delicate play of surface color.

The quality of pearl, or pearl grade, is determined by its size, luster, shape, color, orient, and surface perfection. Luster depends upon the reflection, refraction and diffraction of light from the translucent layers. A pearl's luster is finer if it has thinner and more numerous layers. If successive layers overlap, the light falling on the surface breaks up and the pearl displays iridescence.

The largest pearl was discovered by an anonymous Filipino Muslim diver in Palawan, Philippines in'34. It was found from a non-nacreous giant clam. The pearl has a china plate like gloss but is not pearly as it did not come from a pearl oyster. It has a weight of-- lbs. or 6.4 kilograms. It is known as the "Pearl of Allah".

A pearl is an organic gem and is the oldest known gem. For centuries, it was considered to be the most valuable. It is the only gem created by a living creature and the only gem that requires no cutting or polishing before use. Though it is delicate, it has been successfully used in jewelry for thousands of years.