Pearls have been collected, sought after, bought and valued as the world's only organically produced gem for above 400 years. They were viewed as the sign of luxury jewelry, and were only affordable to the rich and wealth.
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The origin of cultured pearls
2010-09-06 09:48:36
People of all nations had been seeking how to grow the precious pearls for thousands of years. The relevant theories ranged from dewdrops and tears of the God's, to the most well accepted urban legend of a trapped grain of sand. But not until the end of the 19th century did scientists and shell farmers yield blister pearls, or pearls attached to the inside of mollusk shells.
British-expatriate marine biologist William Sawville-Kent changed this and found a way to stimulate a mollusk to produce whole pearls in Australia. His technique involved planting a rounded bead inside a mollusk. Along with the bead he implanted a small piece of donor mollusk mantle tissue. The perfect combination was born. This small piece of tissue acted as a catalyst of pearl production. It grew into a pearl sac which enveloped the bead, coated it with nacre and produced a pearl.
In 1916 Kokichi Mikimoto, after many hard attempts, finally succeeded to get a patent for whole pearl cultivation. The cultured pearl industry was called the Mikimoto Pearl Company.
For more than 50 years the Japanese closely held their national secret and kept a real monopoly of pearl cultivation and marketing. Even ventures outside of Japan in Australia, French Polynesia, Thailand, and Burma were under the direction of Japanese grafting technicians and operational specialists. Technicians swore an oath to never reveal the secret of pearl culture.
Until the late 1950s and early 1960s, other countries finally developed the same techniques for pearl culturing. China began culturing akoya pearls in the 1960s as did Tahiti with black South Sea pearls. Australia soon followed suit which produced the largest and most valuable of all cultured pearls South Sea pearls from the Pinctada maxima pearl oyster.
Today pearl farms are found throughout the world and the Japanese dominance over the industry is gone. There are now thousands of pearl farms in China, hundreds in French Polynesia, many in Australia Vietnam and Korea, and even some small operations in India, Venezuela and Mexico.
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