Pearl

Pearls are very dif­fer­ent from the oth­er gem­stones be­cause of their source. The pearl is an or­gan­ic gem that is cre­ated when an oyster, ir­rit­ated by the pres­ence of a for­eign ob­ject in­side the shell, cov­ers the ob­ject with a beau­ti­ful lay­er of nacre. The oyster does so to pro­tect it­self from the ir­rit­ant and to isol­ate the for­eign ob­ject with­in the shell. Nacre slowly cov­ers an ob­ject (usu­ally it is a grain of sand) with lay­ers of ar­ag­on­ite over time – that is the way a pearl de­vel­ops. It takes about 12 years for a grain to be­come a real pearl.

Pearls do not need any ad­di­tion­al or ar­ti­fi­cial pro­cessing. Since an­cient times, pearls have been con­sidered both clas­sic­ally simple and el­eg­antly chic stones. In China 4000 years ago, taxes were paid with pearls. In An­cient Europe, pearls were used for ad­orn­ing icons, re­li­gious ob­jects, and clothes. A pearl’s value de­pends on its col­or and size. The clear­er the pearl's col­or means the more the pearl sparkles and the more it would be val­ued.

Pearls can be not only of tra­di­tion­al white, but also of blue, rose, red, yel­low, and even black col­or. Red or rose pearls look like cor­als, but their sil­ver shine and the unique mi­cro­scop­ic pat­terns on their sur­face re­semble burn­ing flames. This kind of pearl is very highly val­ued: some rose pearls can cost over ten thou­sand dol­lars each. The best rose pearls come from the Per­sian Gulf, but des­pite their great qual­ity, they are usu­ally fairly small in size. The north­ern coast of Aus­tralia is fam­ous for its big white metal­lic glit­ter­ing pearls. The largest pearls can be found in shells of big oysters called tri­dacna.

Black pearls are the rarest and the most val­ued among oth­er pearls. After the in­ven­tion of the ar­ti­fi­cial pearls pro­duc­tion meth­od, nat­ur­ally black pearls con­sid­er­ably fell in price. Nev­er­the­less, the nat­ur­al black pearls are still very valu­able be­cause, as op­posed to the ar­ti­fi­cial white pearls that look nearly au­then­t­ic, the ar­ti­fi­cially grown black pearls are hard to mis­take for the nat­ur­al ones. Some­times, nat­ur­ally grown pearls are dyed with sil­ver ni­trate to make them black, but these dyed pearls can be eas­ily re­cog­nized as well since their col­or is much smooth­er and dark­er than that of the nat­ur­al stones.

The main dif­fer­ence between the nat­ur­al and the ar­ti­fi­cially grown pearls is hid­den in the core of a pearl it­self. The heart of pearl is a small grain of sand covered with mul­tiple mi­cro-lay­ers of nacre that is a few mil­li­meters thick. Such pearls glit­ter very at­tract­ively be­cause they shine from with­in. Ar­ti­fi­cially grown pearls are also beau­ti­ful, but they are no sub­sti­tute to the shine of the nat­ur­al pearls. The ar­ti­fi­cial pearls are grown from much lar­ger grains of sand, which speeds up their growth pro­cess and yields lar­ger pearls, but also sig­ni­fic­antly di­min­ishes their shine be­cause few­er lay­ers are re­quired to achieve the de­sired pearl size.

Cur­rently, the prac­tice of cul­tiv­at­ing pearls is widely used all over the world. When a grain of sand or a part of an­oth­er pearl oyster is ar­ti­fi­cially placed in­to an oyster shell to form a pearl around it, the pro­cess is sim­il­ar to ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­in­a­tion. This ‘in­sem­in­a­tion’ pro­cess is a fine sur­gic­al act – if the pro­ced­ure is done in­cor­rectly, an oyster can eject the im­plant or even die. The res­ult of a suc­cess­ful pro­ced­ure is a pearl grown in a shell in a couple of years. A pearl’s col­or de­pends on the par­ent oyster and the col­or of the nacre emit­ted by the oyster. The tints of the col­ors de­pend on the tem­per­at­ure of wa­ter where the oysters live.

Pearl is a talis­man for pure and sin­cere love, de­vo­tion, and joy. It pro­tects its wear­er from ill-wish­ers and of­fend­ers, from neg­at­ive en­ergy, hexes, evil, and be­tray­al. It is be­lieved that pearls can­not tol­er­ate evil and go dull from be­ing close to it so dis­hon­est people with dark souls can­not wear pearls well. On the con­trary, pearls thrive when worn by kind and open­hearted people. Pearls also pro­tect their own­ers dur­ing jour­neys at sea (one just needs to sub­merge pearl ear­rings or neck­lace in­to sea wa­ter), and they bring longev­ity and hap­pi­ness.