I repaired a very pretty, freshwater pearl necklace for a client last night and it reminded me why I love pearls so much. There is that certain "je ne sais quoi" about them that draws you in where you just need to touch them and slide them through your fingers.

When I first got interested in Jewelry making, I took the time to do a lot of reading and research on stones, pearls, amber and whatever else I would be using in my craft. I wanted to be able to offer the best product to my customers and I couldn't achieve that if I didn't know my own product. During that time, I came accross much information about pearls, their history and their production.

At one time, pearls were not cultured. People would go through great lengths, even risking their lives to find them in the sea "a la naturel". That's one of the reasons they were only accessible to the rich and royal. Of course, just as one would evaluate the price of a gemstone by its quality, a strand of pearls would only be worth as much as the quality of the pearls. For a strand to be very valuable, all pearls must be matching in color, shape, size and luster. It's easy to find natural sea pearls in mollusques, but it doesn't mean they're worth anything.

I remember, we use to go to the beach and look for wild sea mussels (we would boil and eat them as a tasty treat). While chewing our juicy, salty-sweet treats, we would sometimes crunch what felt very much like large grains of sand. It was in fact small, baroque-shaped pearls ranging from the size of large sand grains up to small barley grain.

While visiting our neighbours house one day, I was proudly showing off my new found little treasures (about a dozen or so of small pearls). To my surprise, my neighbour wanted them. She offered me money for them. I was only 9 years old, but I was smart enough to know that they were not worth anything really, and I just could not figure out why a fancy lady such as herself would want worthless mussel pearls, but I sold them to her. I really felt I was the winner in this one.

To this day I do not know what her plans were with those wortheless pearls. I just figured she wanted to accumulate them to make a delicate pearl necklace. Perhaps for her it wasn't about the monetary value. Perhaps it was the romance of it all.

That certainly isn't everyone's point of view, for example in 1917 a strand of matching, natural sea pearls was worth $1 Million (You can only imagine what it would be worth today). For some, it is about the monetary value!

Because 99% of pearls today are cultured, the pearl farmer has control over the shape. I was really
surprised to learn about the different shapes of pearls produced for the jewelry making industry. They range from our regular round shaped (the ones we saw most of our lives), the coin-shaped, the stick pearl, the keishi pearl, the potato pearl, the blister pearl, the button pearl and I'm sure there are more.

The pearls used in the Necklace design below is "Mabe Pearl" and round pearls.

Please come often to see part II of "The Amazing Story of Pearls".

I will be explaining how the pearl farmer achieves different shapes and I'll be unveiling the biggest myth ever told about pearls. Come back soon to read the rest of the fascinating story of pearls.