Il blog delle perle dei mari del sud

  • giugno 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?
    Continue reading
  • febbraio 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.

    Continue reading
  • gennaio 08, 2022

    🧐 Come fa Oyster a fare le perle colorate?

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

    In che modo Oyster produce le perle colorate?

    Questa è una domanda che si pone a molti quando iniziano a scoprire il mondo delle perle, poiché tradizionalmente si pensava che il colore naturale delle perle fosse il bianco.
    Per molti anni è stato così, con Akoya perle dal Giappone, perle d'acqua dolce in Cina e le ambite perle australiane.
    Ma ci sono altri colori di perle, come l'oro delle perle dei Mari del Sud nelle Filippine o in Indonesia, o le perle nere della Polinesia francese, il cui colore naturale non è il bianco.

    Perché le perle prendono questo colore?

    Esiste un tipo di ostrica chiamata Pinctada Maxima, che in alcune regioni del mondo come le Filippine o l'Indonesia ha labbra dorate. La perla, una volta formata, assorbe la madreperla dorata e assume quel colore.
    Lo stesso processo avviene con le perle nere di Tahiti, ma in questo caso con l'ostrica Pinctada Margaritifera, nella Polinesia francese.

    Un altro fattore che può influenzare il colore delle perle, anche se in misura minore, è la temperatura dell'acqua e la sua pulizia. Affinché le perle adottino un bel colore, l'acqua deve essere estremamente pulita.



    Continue reading