Posts Tagged ‘Freshwater pearls’

Different Variety of Freshwater Pearl Earrings

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

White circular pearl earrings are usually quite common and lovely, but we have a different variety of freshwater pearl earrings. They consists of baroque, coin, stick, cross-shaped, keshi, and flake-pear earrings. All of these pearls are freshwater and with a little imagination these odd shaped pearls can be outstanding.

Clusters of small odd-shaped pearls made into earrings that dangle from the ear can be very artistic and beautiful. Tiny elongated rice pearls strung in a small cluster for each ear is a captivating design. Multicolored seed pearls mixed with crystals also make a fancy pair of earrings. An extravagant pair of earrings of a different variety is the keshi pearl earrings that hang from a fine golden chain with tiny black diamonds trailing down to the oddly shaped keshi pearl. When in motion these breathtaking earrings sparkle like the moon.

Heart shapes, diamond shapes, crosses, triangles, buttons, bars, navettes and teardrops are some of the fancy-shapes of our freshwater earrings. A pearl technician inserts beads with these shapes into the mussel’s mantle tissue to create these wonderful shapes of freshwater pearls. These are definitely different from your conventional pearl earrings.

Black Freshwater Pearls

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

If there’s a gem that has a permanent place in a world of timeless glamour, it will be the pearl.  Pearls are the irregularly shaped to round beads that form from the secretions of mollusks.  This happens as a reaction of the mollusk when a foreign particle enters it.  The foreign particle is coated by the secretion over and over.  Once it hardens, a pearl is formed.  Pearls are shiny formations that come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the kind of mollusk that formed it.

Generally, there are two kinds of pearls based on the way they are formed.  It can be a freshwater pearl or it can be the saltwater pearl.  Freshwater pearls are those formed by mollusks (specifically mussels) that thrive in freshwater.  On the other hand, saltwater pearls are formed by oysters found in saltwater.

Freshwater pearls, as mentioned earlier, are produced by freshwater mussels.  Specifically put, the mussels that produce the freshwater pearls belong to the family Uniondae.  These kinds of mussels are found in bodies of freshwater such as ponds, lakes and rivers.  Freshwater pearls are mostly made in China as culturing it is a common practice. 

Today, the culturing of freshwater pearls made the availability of pearls in the market higher. However, the situation is not the same with black freshwater pearls.  Black pearls are harder to culture due to the sensitivity of the mollusk that creates it.  Though the culturing of black pearls is not impossible, it is still difficult.