Since recorded history, there were mentions of pearls. For thousands of years, pearls are treasured in every culture and regarded as one of the most precious gems.

A pearl is an organic gem that grows in bivalve mollusks. For natural pearls, they begin with very small foreign objects entering the mollusks, or oysters, that cause irritation. The oysters then produce a soothing secretion called conchiolin and secrete a whitish substance called nacre over the conchiolin. When we look at a pearl, the nacre is what we see. Because natural pearls are all nacre, it takes several years or more to produce even a 5 millimeter pearl. Natural pearls have become extremely rare due to pollution and over fishing which has exhausted the wild mollusks that produce them.

In late 19th century, a breakthrough in domesticated pearl farming, called pearl culturing, occurred. Among the few most successful persons, Tokichi Mikimoto was the most famous in culturing round pearls. Today, almost all pearls on the market are cultured pearls.

To culture a pearl, a highly skilled person carefully inserts a small round piece of shell, or nucleus, into the oyster, with a tiny piece of mantle tissue from another oyster attached to the nucleus. This nucleation process is also called seeding. The oyster is then returned to the water, and layers of nacre grow inside of the oysters over a period of time, usually between 6 months and 3 years. Periodically, the oysters are checked and examined to ensure healthy growth. Natural disasters out of the control of the pearl farmers, earthquakes, for example, can cause devastating damage to pearl crops. For those oysters that survive the nucleation process, only a small percentage will produce lustrous, round, and beautifully colored pearls.

No two pearls are alike. Therefore, matching a pearl strand or just a pair of earrings can be a challenging task. Luster, size, shape, color and surface cleanliness all need to be sorted and matched. To ‘make’ a strand of pearls, it often takes more than 10,000 pearls to complete the matching process. When the final product is perfectly done, the outcome is a long lasting piece of jewelry for generations to enjoy.