Capture a little piece of sunshine
Head gears, necklaces, earrings, bangles, broaches, pendants, rings, nose pins and many other ornaments with a variety of designs and that too in different colors- Sounds interesting? Yes indeed. We all know that pearls are use for making jewelry since ancient times but only few of us have the knowledge about its processes and manufacture. We know where corn comes from, and wheat, even rice and cotton, but how about pearls? Pearls are also grown much like any other crop on a pearl farm. The only difference in normal crops fields and pearls farms is: the pearls are cultivated inside the man made ponds. These ponds are shallow enough and the oyster and mussels are grown in them. Farms have round black floats or floating platforms with oysters suspended below. Into the shallow water there are narrow rows of bottles on which there is a lot of algae which is naturally deposited on it and between the rows of green suspended bottles, a rope tied from bottle to bottle which holds a mesh sack filled with growing mussels which are fed periodically to help them grow faster. The oysters and mussels generally lose their life during the pearl harvesting process. In certain cases they can be nucleated more than once.
Five basic characteristics of pearls are: luster, shape, size, color, surface. When picking out pearls, it's wise to look at them with your back to the light. A fine pearl will reflect your image like a mirror as luster is the most important of the five qualities. The shape can be round, baroque, oval, button, mabe, teardrop, rice. Round shaped pearls are the most highly favored and valuable. Baroque or irregular or potato shaped is some of the names given to odd shaped pearls. Shapes vary from near round to highly irregular. Oval shaped pearls are sort of like an egg. They look lovely strung end to end. Button shaped pearls are round but a little flat. Similar to round, they can be strung into lovely halsketten(pearl necklaces) . Mabe shaped pearls are round on the top and flat on one side making them useful for earrings and pins. Teardrop shaped Perlen( beads ) lend themselves a drop like appearance, generally used to make necklaces or hanging earrings. Rice shaped pearls looks like rice seeds and are usually used in mass amounts on twisted strands or with other stones.
