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CULTURED PEARLS AND "WILD-CAUGHT" PEARLS, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

by Anna Semiachko June 25, 2018

CULTURED PEARLS AND "WILD-CAUGHT" PEARLS, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

Jonathan Sayeb is the founder of Namaka brand and all Namaka pearls come from the Fakarava Pearl Farm in Tahiti that belongs to Franck Tehaamatai, Jonathan Sayeb’s father-in-law.

You can think of cultured pearls as "farmed" pearls while "wild-caught" pearls are those rarely found in the nature that appear without any human intervention.

Both farmed and "wild" pearls grow in the same way, but in the case of cultured pearls, they occur when a human “plants a seed” (called nuclei) in that particular oyster.

In nature, pearls form completely by accident when a piece of shell or sand gets under the oyster's shell. The oyster then starts to secrete a special substance that gathers around the seed and in 1,5 - 2 years’ time (in perfect conditions) may become a pearl.

The naturally formed pearls one can find now, perhaps, only on Queen Elizabeth’s crown. All the other pearls used in modern jewelry production are farmed nowadays.

People discovered how to culture pearls just in the first half of the 20th century in Japan. Shortly after pearl farms appeared in China, Tahiti (homeland to Namaka Pearl) and some other countries with suitable weather conditions.

 

 




Anna Semiachko
Anna Semiachko

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