El Blog de la Perla del Mar del Sur

  • junio 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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  • febrero 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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  • enero 08, 2022

    🧐 ¿Cómo hace Oyster perlas de colores?

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

    ¿Cómo hace Oyster las perlas de colores?

    Esta es una pregunta que les surge a muchos cuando empiezan a descubrir el mundo de las perlas, ya que tradicionalmente se ha pensado que el color natural de las perlas es el blanco.
    Durante muchos años ha sido así, con Akoya perlas de Japón, perlas de agua dulce en China y las codiciadas perlas australianas.
    Pero existen otros colores de perlas, como las perlas doradas de los Mares del Sur en Filipinas o Indonesia, o las perlas negras de la Polinesia Francesa, cuyo color natural no es el blanco.

    ¿Por qué las perlas toman este color?

    Existe un tipo de ostra llamada Pinctada Maxima, que en algunas regiones del mundo como Filipinas o Indonesia tiene los labios dorados. La perla, al formarse, absorbe el nácar dorado y adopta ese color.
    El mismo proceso ocurre con las perlas negras de Tahití, pero en este caso con la ostra Pinctada Margaritifera, en la Polinesia Francesa.

    Otro Un factor que puede influir en el color de las perlas, aunque en menor medida, es la temperatura del agua y lo limpia que esté. Para que las perlas adopten un hermoso color el agua debe estar extremadamente limpia.



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