Pearl Necklaces and other Jewellery

Look at our range of beautiful pearl jewellery, including earrings, necklaces and bracelets, both cultured and fresh water, and of various types including baroque. Pearl jewellery always makes a wonderful birthday or anniversary gift. Click here to see all pearl jewellery.   What are pearls? They are hard, round objects produced by oysters. Pearls have long been valued as gemstones and  cultivated or harvested for use in jewellery. Freshwater pearl jewellery starts with a pearl  from freshwater mussels; these cover the widest range of colours and shapes than any other pearl type currently available… making them the perfect fit for pearl jewellery. Natural pearls  form when a small foreign particle - even a grain of sand, becomes trapped in the gonad or mantle tissue of an oyster. Pearl diving used to be the favourite way of harvesting pearls. Divers would pull oysters from the floor of the oceans  and rivers and they would examine them individually for pearls. But not all natural oysters produce pearls. It would take nearly one ton of oysters to obtain  a handful of perfect round pearls, making them very scarce, and of course, valuable. The pearl is the oldest known gem, and for many centuries was believed to be the most valuable. A fragment of the oldest known pearl jewellery, found in Persia is displayed in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Pearls symbolised the moon and had magic powers. he Latin word for pearl means "unique". In ancient Rome, only citizens above a certain rank were permitted to wear pearl jewellery. Pearl oysters were collected by the Sumerians in the Persian Gulf as long ago as 4000 years. The Bahrain Pearl Banks along the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Manaar in Ceylon were renowned for their lovely natural pearls. The Japanese pearl divers were women, known as "Ama" ('sea women)'.  Ama still dive without modern equipment - these 'free' divers often swim as deep as 100 feet with a single breath of air. Even though the traditional source of pearls has been saltwater molluscs, it is also the case that freshwater mussels, living in lakes, ponds, and rivers, can also produce pearls. The Chinese have harvested freshwater pearls since the 13th century, and are now leaders in freshwater pearl supply. Pearls in China are recorded from 206 BC. Freshwater pearls tend to be less round than saltwater pearls, and may not have the same sharp lustre and shine as akoya pearls. Yet they have a beauty of their own,  and are found in a range of shapes and natural colours. They are extremely strong and resistant to chipping, thus making them excellent for use in jewellery. The quality nowadays of freshwater pearls is very good .Today's cultured pearls are the result of improvements made in the19th and early 20th centuries by Japanese researchers. Although some cultures had long been able to artificially stimulate molluscs into producing a type of pearl, the pearls produced in this way were only blister, rather than actual round pearls. What the Japanese discovered was a new technique for encouraging the formation of a round pearl  inside the oyster. This technique was patented by Kokichi Mikimoto and the first harvest of round pearls was produced in 1916.