History of Cultured Pearls
In the History of Cultured pearls, the name Mikimoto pearls appears on nearly every single cultured pearls page. After-all, it was the Japanese marketing genius, of Kokichi Mikimoto, who 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. Cultured pearls history is a fascinating history! Just talk to some of the oldest employees of Mikimoto pearls, the world's most famous pearl manufacturer and hear what they have to say.... They still remember seeing their fierce company founder, telescope in hand, scanning the waters below to see if any of the Japanese pearl divers were slacking off, on the giant wooden floats that support baskets full of busy bivalves. On the wall of Mikomoto's 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. The beauty of Akoyas are undeniable; feast your eyes on these iridescent pearls in the photo at the top of this page as Miss Universe (Miss Panama) is being crowned with a Mikimoto Pearl tiara. But in the history of cultured pearls, Mr Mikimoto was not the first to culture pearls! In cultured pearl history, Mr Mikimoto was the first to perfect the process and to successfully market cultured pearls to the world. However, sources from down-under, strongly indicate that in the history of cultured pearls, William Saville-Kent discovered the culturing process first.
In the history of cultured pearls, the primitive cultured pearling techniques go a long way back to the third century. Philostratus, a Greek writer (well, I did say a long way back) gave credit to the Arabs of the Red Sea with the knowledge of growing pearls artificially. 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 possess some of these very early cultured pearls and manuscripts which detail the secret process the naturalist followed. 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 was 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. Meanwhile the Chinese and later the Japanese followed similar processes. They used nuclei of various shapes and materials, mostly spherical pellets of nacre. But is was, undoubtedly Kokichi Mikimoto who established the Japanese cultured pearling industry that changed the nature of the pearl trade forever.
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