A Pearl is a Pearl, Right?

Wrong.

We have got so many pearls in the workshop just waiting to be made into something wonderful, and going through them the other day it struck me how different they all are, and yet they are all pearls. A bit like potatoes, really. It took an Irish woman to teach me that not all potatoes are created equal, and now I find that not all pearls are created equal either. I know so little about so much.

Salt Water Pearls — The Rare Ones

Did you know that only 5% of pearls on the market are saltwater pearls and the other 95% are freshwater pearls? Wild saltwater pearls are incredibly rare — and therefore incredibly expensive — and are found in only about 1 in 10,000 oysters. The three kinds of saltwater pearls are Akoya, Tahitian and South Sea, and the reason they are so different is because they all grow in different oysters. Black-lipped oysters make those amazing black pearls with the deep purple sheen; yellow-lipped oysters make the gold pearls, and so on. Saltwater pearls produce one pearl at a time.

According to National Geographic, even with cultivation practices the annual world production of diamonds is ten times greater than the annual harvest of Australian South Sea pearls. Rare indeed.

Freshwater Pearls

And then there are the freshwater pearls. Did you know that freshwater pearls actually grow in mussels and not in oysters? China produces the overwhelming majority of pearls for the world market — you probably knew that bit — and a freshwater mussel will typically produce 30 to 50 pearls in a lifetime.

Mabé Pearls

Sometimes we are able to get really magnificent mabé pearls, which I am great at selling but really know nothing about. So I went and had a dig about, and it turns out that a mabé pearl is actually a blister pearl — this means it grows on the inside of a shell rather than in a mollusc itself. This produces a pearl with a flat back, which makes it perfect for setting in 22ct gold!

So when you are shopping for pearls, do not bother asking whether they are cultured pearls (as I did...) because pretty well all pearls are cultured. And if you are looking at pearls that cost the same as a small house in the Cotswolds, you do not need to ask the question — because they are probably some of the very rare, and exquisitely beautiful, wild saltwater pearls.

Oh, and by the way — did you know pearl oysters are protandrous hermaphrodites, born male and transforming into females? As I said, I know so little about so much.