Der South Sea Pearl Blog

  • Juni 07, 2022

    Understanding colour in cultured pearls is fascinating.

    The South Sea Pearl Blog The South Sea Pearl
    Understanding colour in cultured pearls is fascinating. The causes are varied, namely organic pigments and the chemistry related to the water reservoir where the pearl shell is grown (for example, sea water and freshwater have different manganese concentrations with impact on the color of the nacre). The pearl mollusc species is, of course, one of the most important factors in this process, specially the donor specimen that provides the mantle tissue graft (known as saibo) that is inserted in the gonads or mantle (depending on the culturing method) of a productive pearl mollusc for the formation of the cultured pearl sac. Experiments in xenotransplantation (meaning graft from one species in host mollusc of another species) have demonstrated that colour is controlled mostly by the genetic characteristics of the graft in cultured pearls. Still there with me after some pearl jargon?
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  • Februar 18, 2022

    What do you know about Mabe Pearls?

    The South Sea Pearl Blog The South Sea Pearl
     For a pearl product to be called a pearl it needs to be formed inside a pearl sac in the interior of pearl producing mollusc. A cultured pearl is basically the same, but resulting from human intervention. When a pearl sac, that is a closed cell membrane, is not involved, the gem material is not a pearl, but something else.
    The so-called mabe pearls (or hankei pearls) are great examples for this as, technically, these are not pearls in the sense that they do not grow inside a pearl sac. In fact, these are protuberances in the shell’s nacreous interior that form as a consequence of a human-instigated process, being defined as cultured blisters. To be used in jewellery, these cultured shell blisters are worked, cut from the shell (soft nuclei removed), the interior filled with a hardened substance and finished with a mother-of-pearl cap glued to the base, making it an assembled product. Hence, a more correct designation would be assembled cultured blister.
    The name “mabe” comes from the Japanese vernacular for Pteria penguin (mabe-gai), a pearl producing mollusc that was originally used to grown these cultured blisters, and it has been used as a more romantic trade name for similar products from other molluscs.

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  • Januar 08, 2022

    🧐 Wie stellt Oyster farbige Perlen her?

    🧐 How do Oyster makes colored pearls? | The South Sea Pearl

    Wie stellt Oyster farbige Perlen her?

    Das ist eine Frage, die sich viele stellen, wenn sie beginnen, die Welt der Perlen zu entdecken, da traditionell angenommen wird, dass die natürliche Farbe von Perlen weiß ist.
    Seit vielen Jahren ist es bei Akoya so Perlen aus Japan, Süßwasserperlen in China und die begehrten australischen Perlen.
    Aber es gibt auch andere Perlenfarben, wie das Gold der Südseeperlen in den Philippinen oder Indonesien oder die schwarzen Perlen in Französisch-Polynesien, deren natürliche Farbe nicht weiß ist.

    Warum nehmen Perlen diese Farbe an?

    Es gibt eine Austernart namens Pinctada Maxima, die in einigen Regionen der Welt, wie den Philippinen oder Indonesien, goldene Lippen hat. Die gebildete Perle absorbiert das goldene Perlmutt und nimmt diese Farbe an.
    Derselbe Prozess findet bei den schwarzen Perlen von Tahiti statt, aber in diesem Fall bei der Pinctada Margaritifera-Auster in Französisch-Polynesien.

    Ein anderer Ein Faktor, der die Farbe von Perlen beeinflussen kann, wenn auch in geringerem Maße, ist die Temperatur des Wassers und wie sauber es ist. Damit Perlen eine schöne Farbe annehmen, muss das Wasser extrem sauber sein.



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