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With a history fit for royalty, and nicknames
such as the “queen of gems”, pearls
have always held a history, and draw that is far
greater than what today’s pearl admirer
may be aware. Throughout the greater part of known
history, a fine natural pearl necklace has been considered
among the most desired and priceless jewelry.
Their values were higher than any other piece
of jewelry in the world. Pearls have come a long way but are still the prized possessions that they were hundreds of years ago. Here’s
the story…
Pearls have only been cultured since the early
1900s. Before that time, people relied solely
on the collection of natural pearls. As natural
pearls are extremely rare, they were considered
so prohibitively expensive that they were almost
exclusively kept for the highest nobles, royalty,
and the extremely wealthy.
At the peak of the Roman Empire, when
the fad for pearls reached its height, Suetonius
the historian wrote of the fact that the Roman
general Vitellius sold one of his mother’s
pearl earrings and was able to use the money to
finance an entire military campaign.
No one actually knows who the first people were
to collect or to wear pearls. It’s believed
that it must have been an ancient fish-eating
tribe, likely somewhere along the coast India,
who may have discovered pearls while opening their
oysters for their food. No matter their actual
origin as jewelry or decoration, the respect and
wonder over pearls has spread worldwide throughout
the millennia that followed.
Of course, pearls don’t occur just anywhere,
and the locations in which pearls do form dictate
the type of pearl that will come to be.
Historically, the main beds of pearl-producing
oysters lay in the Persian Gulf, along India’s
coast, and what is now Sri Lanka, as well as in
the Red Sea. Pearls also occurred in China in
freshwater rivers and ponds. Japan had some pearls
which occurred in salt water near the coast. These
locations were the source of almost every pearl
to be found before pearls were cultured.
Over the next few thousand years, only three
events occurred to truly impact what seemed to
be an exclusive source for pearls. Two of these
occurred after Columbus opened up a whole new
world of pearl discovery to Europe.
Spain forced slaves to dive for pearls along
both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central
America. England worked North America’s
Atlantic coast, and France searched the North
and the West. They both soon discovered that Natives
were wearing pearls, and concentrated on their
discoveries of freshwater pearls in Mississippi,
Ohio, and the Tennessee River basins. However,
over-fishing in Central and North American waters
soon depleted the beds. Furthermore, what over-fishing
didn’t impact, the high levels of industrialization’s
pollution took care of.
Fortunately, the Japanese discovered
the process of nucleating soon after and saved the
many forms of oysters from being over-fished. The nucleation process has revolutionized the world of pearls and they are still one of the most prized gems of the world!
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