Mikimoto Cultured Pearls Knocked the Bottom Out of the Natural Pearl Market

Toying with the idea of collecting saltwater cultured pearls jewelry - the saltwater solitaire ring that you can see above, will get you started and is available for purchase at Amarna Jewelry.

This page is chocked full of information. You can also read how to go about identifying cultured pearls from faux pearls, the latter being the preference of French designers in the 1920s. Click here if you would like to understand the pearl grading system after positive identification.

Coco Chanel often incorporated imitation pearls or faux pearls into her own costume jewelry designs - Chanel costume jewelry.

The origins of both natural and cultured orbs are from the sea and only one pearl is ever produced by an oyster in it’s’ lifetime.

The traditional round pearls are usually cultured from saltwater pearl oysters, different from edible oysters, which do not produce the same pearly nacre.

Handmade beaded jewelry and handmade wedding jewelry often rely on the beauty and purity of cultured pearls to add elegance and classicism to a piece of jewellery.

Culturing pearls is an acquired art. To induce the oyster to make a pearl on command, a skilled technician inserts a tiny round bead. typically made of shell taken from an American freshwater mussel and a piece of mantle tissue from another oyster inside the host oyster's gonad.

This causes a pearl sack to form around the irritant bead. The sack begins to secrete nacre, coating the bead. After a period of time, a pearl is ready to be harvested.

The queen of cultured pearls, South Sea pearls are usually identified by their large sizes.

The process of grading pearls is the same grading system used for grading natural and freshwater pearls.

Let's begin this page, with a revealing, closely guarded pearling secret....

"Perliculture is a great adventure" say the perliculturists (people who farm pearls). They freely admit, they don't know from one minute to the next the challenges that lie ahead, but perliculturists don't seem to care. The rewards are just so great, what's one bad season?

Perliculturists are unique. They're not interested in 'the gold hype' or antique gold jewelry their interested only in those precious joules under the sea.

The rarity, value and extraordinarily high prices commanded by real natural pearls - an American skyscraper once exchanged hands for the price of a pearl necklace- increased the need to find convincing substitutes.

The most popular are the Akoya cultured pearls. commonly seen in pearl necklace strands, earrings and solitaire rings.

Akoya cultured pearls and Mikimoto cultured pearls are the specialty of Japanese pearl farms. It took Mikimoto ten years to find just the right Mikimoto pearls for the $1,000,000 Mikiomoto cultured pearl necklace you see in this photograph.

The record for the highest price for a cultured pearl necklace was $2.3 million at Sotheby’s in 1992. The 17-inch strand had 23 pearls with diameters ranging from 16 to 20mm, and a bead-shaped platinum clasp of 60 round diamonds.

If you can see a reflection of your face clearly by gazing into the pearl, that’s a high quality luster.

A 16 inch strand of white South Sea cultured pearls can retail for $40,000 to $50,000.

The size of the pearl has to do with the age and the type of the oyster that created the pearl (the more mature oysters produce larger pearls) and the location in which the pearl was cultured. Further information on grading pearls can be found here.

The best cultured pearls are those that come from an oyster that dies after the pearl is removed. Oysters that do not die after the pearl has been extracted produce what are referred to as “Biwa” pearls. Generally but not always, Biwa pearls fetch a lower price.

Cultured Pearl Ice-Cream Anyone?

In Japan in August 2008, the Yokohama ice cream expo which attracted thousands of fans before it closed had more than 125 varieties of ice cream and pearl ice-cream was on the menu. Made from very finely sliced pieces of pearl from the traditional pearl-growing region of Japan's inland sea!

It is the grading system used for Mikimoto pearls, (not universally adopted by other cultured pearl companies) not pearl ice-cream though that is the main reason why Mikimoto pearls are so famous today.

How much does your bucket of pearls weigh? The measurement for weighing cultured pearls is the CARAT and the GRAIN and the MOMME.

The momme is an old Japanese measure of weight still used for all pearls. One momme is equal to 3.75 grams or 18.75cts.

The exception is the baroque pearls which are usually impossible to measure because of their irregularity. Consequently, baroque pearls are measured by sieve.

Abalone also produce pearls and they also have a unique color. Since the animal has a different anatomy from oysters, the pearls are usually grown against the interior of the shell. This procedure produces a half-sphere pearl, or what the industry calls a "mabé" pearl.

The first pearls to be cultured early in the 1920s, were in Ago Bay and their white color and rosé overtone particularly complement a fair complexion. Because Akoya pearls are a high-quality pearl, you will generally only find them set in high carat gold.

You may notice that the Akoya looks very similar to the freshwater pearl. When compared side-by-side, the difference is quite clear though. Akoya pearls are on average larger, smoother, rounder, and more lustrous than freshwater pearls. If you're looking for a remarkable gift, choose a gift of Akoya cultured pearl jewelry.

Whether you're interested in the cultured pearling history or how to invest money in the black cultured pearl tahitian, buying a strand of pearls needn't be a perilous adventure. Let the perliculturists who like the adventures have them, we just like to admire their beauty and basically - wear them.

And if you already own investment worthy pearls you can brush up on how to care for Pearls here. Join me won't you as we discover the remarkable history of cultured pearls together.....

Ago Bay: The Birth Place Of Mikimoto Pearls

The Japanese marketing genius, Kokichi Mikimoto, leased a thousand acres of sea bottom in Ago Bay where he farmed a million oysters and produced an annual yield of from 30,000 to 50,000 pearls.

The oldest employees of the world's most famous pearl manufacturer still remember seeing their fierce company founder, telescope in hand, scanning the waters below to see if any workers were slacking off on the giant wooden floats that support baskets full of busy bivalves.

On the wall of his living room, largely untouched since the day he died in 1954, are pictures of the three Emperors and Empresses who received his pearls as royal gifts, and proclaimed him a national hero.

And although the cool glow and sheer beauty of the Akoyas are undeniable, as you can see in the Miss Universe tiara set that Miss Panama is wearing, you may be surprised to know that Mr Mikimoto was not the first to culture pearls!

From as early as the third century, Philostratus, yes, a long way back, who was Greek, and a writer, credited the Arabs of the Red Sea with the knowledge of growing pearls artificially. Cultured Pearls can be divided into saltwater and freshwater varieties.

Of all the cultured saltwater pearls across the globe South Sea pearls are the most rare and revered. Born when a foreign particle makes its way into a host oyster, in the pristine salt waters where the temperature is gentle and the atmosphere nurturing, this pearl with a strange perfection bears the fingerprints of forever.

Natural Pearls on the other hand, are exactly that, born with no assistance from man from wild oysters. Natural Pearls are increasingly scarce and extremely valueable.

Certainly the Chinese were producing pearls by artificial means many centuries ago. They inserted pellets of powdered seed pearls into the open shells to form a core for the deposit of the natural secretions of nacre.

In the 18th century the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus wrote that he had discovered how pearls originated and claimed that in the course of five years he could produce in any mother-of-pearl shell, pearls as big as peas. Interestingly, the Linnaean Society of London possesses some of these pearls and manuscripts which detail the secret process the naturalist followed.

Meanwhile the Chinese and later the Japanese followed similar processes. They used nuclei of various shapes and materials, mostly spherical pellets of nacre or then leaden images of Buddha in the usual sitting posture.

In 1884 similar experiments were made at Tahiti. Here the pearl farmers drilled gimlet holes about half an inch in diameter in the shells of pearl-oysters and inserted pellets of nacre or glass held by brass wire passing though a cork stopper which closed the gimlet holes. The oysters were then returned to the sea and when examined several months later were found covered with thin layers of nacre.

Early in the 1890's G.S. Streeter began a similar experiement in Roebuck Bay, Western Australia. Streeter drilled the shells and inserted studs of mother of pearl with a knob projecting inside the shell. The result were excellent pearls. Local prejudice and the Western Australian Government's concern for the future of the natural pearling industry however stopped the experiment, which was repeated in the lagoons at Monte Bello Island, where Streeters had a pearling station.

But is was undoubtedly the Japanese, marketing genius of Kokichi Mikimoto who established the Japanese industry in Ago Bay that changed the nature of the pearl trade forever.

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