Pearl Knowledge

Come and learn why akoya pearls are so expensive and the differences between akoya pearls and freshwater pearls.

What decides freshwater pearl necklace price? A pearl jewelry maker explains why one costs $30 and another $300, and what to check before you buy online.

Natural Freshwater Pearls I get asked this a lot — usually by someone holding a strand they inherited, or eyeing something online that looks too good to be priced that low. There's no single trick that settles it, but there are a few things I check every time I'm sorting through a new batch of pearls, and together they're pretty reliable. Shape Real pearls are rarely perfectly round. A pearl forms slowly, layer by layer, inside a living creature — not in a mold. Some imperfec

Most people, hearing the name "Edison pearl" for the first time, ask the obvious question: does this have something to do with Thomas Edison, the inventor? The answer is: almost nothing, and yet everything. The name traces back to a line often attributed to Edison — that his laboratory could produce almost anything, except two things: diamonds and pearls. Decades later, pearl farmers in China developed a technique that quietly broke the second half of that claim, and the pear

A 2,000-year-old craft tradition — and why you've never heard of it until now.

There is a Freshwater Pearl That Looks Like a Star =================================================== Freshwater star pearls The first time I held a star-shaped freshwater pearl, I laughed a little. Five rounded points, a plump center—it looked like someone’s drawing of a star, only with the soft glow of a pearl. It seemed too whimsical to have grown inside a mussel. But that is where its nacre came from. Star-shaped cultured freshwater pearls are real pearls. Their shape is