The history of pearls: one of nature's greatest miracles
Known as the “Queen of Gems”, pearls have been coveted for centuries. Find out about the world's oldest gem here.
Officially the world’s oldest gem, pearls have been revered since long before written history. For this reason, their discovery cannot be attributed to one person in particular, but it is believed that they were first discovered by people searching for food along the seashore. We know that they have been worn as a form of adornment for millennia thanks to a fragment of pearl jewelry found in the sarcophagus of a Persian princess that dates back to 420 BC, which is now on display at the Louvre in Paris.
Pearls were presented as gifts to Chinese royalty as early as 2300 BC, while in ancient Rome, pearl jewelry was considered the ultimate status symbol. So precious were the spherical gems that in the 1st century BC, Julius Caesar passed a law limiting the wearing of pearls only to the ruling classes.
The abundance of natural oyster beds in the Persian Gulf meant that pearls also carried great importance in Arab cultures, where legend stated that pearls were formed from dewdrops that were swallowed by oysters when they fell into the sea. Before the advent of cultured pearls, the Persian Gulf was at the center of the pearl trade and it was a source of wealth in the region long before the discovery of oil.
With such a long and ancient history, it is no wonder that, over time, the pearl became shrouded in myth and legend. In ancient China, pearl jewelry was said to symbolize the purity of the wearer while, in the Dark Ages, knights often wore pearls on the battlefield, believing that the precious gemstones would keep them safe. According to legend, Cleopatra crushed a pearl into a glass of wine to prove to Marc Antony that she could give the most expensive dinner in history.
Today, natural pearls are among the rarest of gems, and their almost entirely depleted supply means that they are found very infrequently only in the seas off Bahrain and Australia. The scarcity of natural pearls is reflected in the prices they fetch at auction, with antique pearl necklaces and earrings selling for record-breaking sums. Last year, a pair of natural pearl earrings - left - which once belonged to Empress Eugenie of France, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte - set a new world record when they sold for US$3.3 million at Doyle New York.
Pearls have been an important trade commodity since Roman times, and the discovery of pearls in Central and South America in the 15th and 16th centuries led to the so-called Pearl Age. With the escalating demand for pearls in Western Europe, where ladies of nobility and royalty wore elaborate pearl necklaces, earrings, pearl bracelets, and brooches, by the 19th century, demand for pearl jewelry became so high that oyster supplies began to dwindle.
Unlike gemstones that are mined from the earth, a living organism produces a pearl and, in fact, their very existence is a freak of nature. A pearl is formed when an irritant, such as a parasite or piece of shell, becomes accidentally lodged in an oyster's soft inner body, causing it to secrete a crystalline substance called nacre, which builds up around the irritant in layers until a pearl is formed. Cultured pearls are formed through the same process, the only difference being that the irritant is implanted in the oyster rather than entering it by chance.
Until the start of the 20th century, the only way of collecting pearls was through divers risking their lives at depths of up to 100ft to retrieve the pearl oysters. It was a dangerous pursuit and one that carried a limited chance of success as a ton of oysters would throw up only three or four quality pearls. Freshwater mollusks living in shallow rivers and streams were easier to gather, but these pearl beds were often reserved for harvesting by royalty.
www.thejewelleryeditor.com/jew....
#AndrewPidor