Jewelry Lovers

Artificial pearls

Since the sixteenth century or perhaps even earlier pearls have been simulated by coating glass beads with a lacquer in which fish scales were suspended. There is a seventeenth- century reference to men fishing in the Thames who ‘take the fish merely for their scales which they sell to make beads‘.

These artificial pearls are remarkably effective - and deceptive. It is unlikely that a reputable jeweller would try to Pass off artificial pearls as cultured ones, but there have been instances of deception when pearls have been purchased from less reputable sources.

A simple test can be applied to detect artificial pearls: rub the pearls over your teeth. The lacquer layer has a slick, smooth feel, whereas the platey nacre of a cultured or a natural pearl has a gritty surface that with a little practice can be detected. Another test is to look with a magnifying glass at the drill holes where the string passes through the pearls. Often the lacquer layer of an artificial pearl does not completely cover the glass at this point, or it tends to get chipped or worn away and the glass bead can then be seen. The Japanese have recently begun to produce artificial Biwa pearls, reproducing their irregular shapes and tinting the lacquer to simulate the more popular of the pastel shades. These artificial Biwa pearls are very plausible indeed.

Pearl jewellery

Antique jewellery containing pearls can be very attractive, for instance, watch cases with a nimbus of half pearls round them, little brooches set with tiny pearls, or seed pearl jewellery with minuscule pearls threaded on white horsehair. The prospective purchaser is well advised, however, to make sure that such jewellery is in reasonable condition. In theory, missing pearls can be replaced, as can those that have lost their lustre, but it is getting increasingly difficult to find anyone to do the work and by no means easy to obtain the loose pearls even if one is prepared to do the repairs oneself. There is little demand nowadays for seed pearls or the tiny half pearls which were set in jewellery in the last century.

In the past fifty years pearl jewellery was largely restricted to necklaces of various lengths, and of single or multiple rows, and to ear-rings and rings. Nowadays, however, pearls are set in jewellery of all kinds just as they were in the Victorian period. Both oyster pearl and Biwa pearl necklaces are also frequently interspersed with mineral beads, malachite and lapis lazuli probably being the most popular, and with gold beads or gold spacers in the form of little discs. There is a vast variety of pearl jewellery to choose from, its popularity no doubt due to the fact that pearls always seem to look right, whatever one is wearing.

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