Cultured Pearls and Modern Pearl Farms

Almost all of the pearls sold today are cultured pearls grown on pearl farms.  The techniques developed and refined over the last century have allowed modern pearl farmers to produce pearls that conform to specific standards.  Natural pearls are less than one percent of those available on the market nowadays.

The process of pearl farming begins with collection of oysters to be nucleated with foreign material.  Most farmers breed their own oysters using high quality eggs and sperm they have developed through the years.  When the baby oysters have matured enough, a small mother of pearl bead is implanted in the internal tissue.  Then the oyster is moved to a bed where it is tended for a period of several years until the pearl is ready to harvest.

Pearl harvest usually occurs during the winter months when the oyster’s metabolism has slowed.  The shells are opened and the pearl is removed.  Depending on the type of oyster, it is either used for other purposes or returned to the oyster bed to be implanted again.  At this point the harvested pearls are cleaned, polished, and sorted by size.

Typically about half of the pearls that are gathered are suitable for market, and around ten percent will be high quality.  The remaining pearls are either sold at a deep discount, the nacre is removed and the mother of pearl bead is implanted again, or they are treated to enhance the luster.

Tomorrow I’ll write about some of the different types of pearl treatments, and how to identify treated pearls in the marketplace.

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