lipiec 27, 2020
Fireball Fresh-Water Cultured Pearls
"Fireball" is a trade name for a beaded freshwater cultured pearl with a long, irregular tail trailing off a bulbous body — the silhouette of a comet, which is where the name comes from. Freshwater pearl culture turned commercial in Japan in the 1960s at Lake Kasumigaura, using a hybrid mussel crossed from the Japanese Hyriopsis schlegelii and the Chinese Hyriopsis cumingii. Those early cultured pearls, traded as Kasumiga, were always a small production; only a handful of farms are still reported to work that lake today.
The fireball came out of a second-generation technique developed in the early 2000s. A round shell bead of roughly 9 to 12 mm is inserted as a nucleus into a pearl sac left over from a previous culture in the mussel's mantle — the trade calls this CBSB, for the coin-bead then spherical-bead stages of the process. Beading an existing sac lets these pearls reach sizes freshwater rarely hits otherwise: large rounds, and in baroque shapes up to about 25 mm long. The tail is the giveaway. It forms where the original coin pearl tissue keeps secreting nacre past the bead.
A point worth keeping straight: freshwater fireballs are not South Sea or Tahitian pearls. They come from mussels, not from the saltwater Pinctada oysters, and their nacre and luster behave differently. Freshwater colors are also commonly dyed in the wider market, so buy on disclosure.
For a deeper session on these and other freshwater cultured pearls, pearl specialist Jeremy Shepherd has covered the topic in the Home Gemmology webinar series. Check current dates and your timezone before registering at www.ruigalopim.com/events
The fireball came out of a second-generation technique developed in the early 2000s. A round shell bead of roughly 9 to 12 mm is inserted as a nucleus into a pearl sac left over from a previous culture in the mussel's mantle — the trade calls this CBSB, for the coin-bead then spherical-bead stages of the process. Beading an existing sac lets these pearls reach sizes freshwater rarely hits otherwise: large rounds, and in baroque shapes up to about 25 mm long. The tail is the giveaway. It forms where the original coin pearl tissue keeps secreting nacre past the bead.
A point worth keeping straight: freshwater fireballs are not South Sea or Tahitian pearls. They come from mussels, not from the saltwater Pinctada oysters, and their nacre and luster behave differently. Freshwater colors are also commonly dyed in the wider market, so buy on disclosure.
For a deeper session on these and other freshwater cultured pearls, pearl specialist Jeremy Shepherd has covered the topic in the Home Gemmology webinar series. Check current dates and your timezone before registering at www.ruigalopim.com/events
Leave a comment