Friday, September 30, 2011

Identifying Actual Fresh Waterway Pearls

By Agus Rahman


Pearls are elegant jewelry. You might buy them shaped as necklaces, bracelets, earrings or even as an accent to a ring. There are thousands, if not thousands of pearl jewelry styles to select from in the market today. Before you buy one for yourself, you have to learn how to identify if what you are getting is true or fake.

Preliminary, you have to know the kind of pearl that is available in the market. They are categorized in two:

1. Saltwater pearls - these are formed inside oysters that are living in the heart of the ocean. It has three types - Tahitian, Akoya, and South Sea Pearls - depending on the kind of oyster that made it.

2. Freshwater pearls - these are formed inside mussels that are living in lakes, rivers, ponds, or any other body of fresh river.

Either saltwater pearls or fresh water pearls can be natural or cultured. Natural means that there is no human intervention and the pearl is formed naturally by the oyster or mussel. The pearl oyster secretes nacre an iridescent material made of calcium carbonate. The nacre will coat a microscopic irritant entering its shell until a pearl is formed. On the other hand, cultured means that a pearl grower will carefully open the shell and introduce a small object as an irritant (generally a bead or metal), then get them back into the water and wait for the pearl to shape. This often takes 2-5 years.

There are many fake pearls out there, however it is more pleasant to own a real pearl jewelry at least once in your lifetime. A actual pearl does not just mean "natural". Even "cultured" pearls are genuine pearls too, having an advantage of being more affordable than natural pearls.

When you hear of fake pearls, it means that they are man-made pearls produced of glass, ceramics, plastics or any other similar materials. They are as well called "faux" pearls and are sold as attire jewellery. In the face of contemporary technology, man may create pearls that gaze like the initial one. Mind you, fakes can have the exact preliminary look, but they do not have the same weight or texture. And their luster is dimmer, which is enough to indicate that they are imitations of the first. They do not contain any gem value.

To assist you with identifying real fresh river pearls, here is a three way test:

1. Tooth test - get the pearl and run it against your front teeth, only right under the biting edge. If you sense a gritty feeling, it is most probably real. Fake pearls are smooth, like plastic or glass. But, be very careful of the pearls that are made from ground shells as they can as well be gritty.

2. Luster test - test the pearls against all kinds of light. Fake pearls will have got a shine only on the surface, while actual pearls always shine from within.

3. Rub test - get two pearls and rub it together. It have to be gritty and do not slide off each other.




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