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 Pearl farmers are many things, mariners, builders, divers, adventurers; they are often isolated on minute islands, living the hard life if those that live by the sea. Confronted by the long distances, difficult provisioning and dangers like cyclones and tsunamis, a sea environment that is often as hostile as it is paradisiacal. |
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 Pearl production is a process that begins with the collection of young oysters called SPAT. This collecting process involves placing collecting stations, which are made up of a framework of plastic shades which due to their dark colour and special design attract the young oysters, which are a few millimeters at their largest.
The young oyster will attach themselves to these shades via its byssus. It will stay like this for a period of one to two years, after which it will be detached delicately from the collecting station: this process is called DETROCAGE. These young oysters will then be strung together in chaplets until they grow to a large enough size to be successfully grafted.
Once these oysters possess the right combination of characteristics they will be gathered and prepared for the painstaking grafting process.
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| Pearl grafting techniques |
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 This process consists of placing a small sphere of oyster shell (known as a nucleus) and a small piece of the mantle of a another oyster into the gonad of the pearl oyster so that the epithelial cells of the mantle will multiply and cover the nucleus creating a pearl sac in which a pearl will grow. This pearl will be made up of thousands fine layers of mother of pearl.
It is these successive layers of mother of pearl and the prismatic structure of the crystals that these layers are made of that deconstruct the light and give the pearl the iridescent quality that we call orient.
Grafting an oyster is a delicate surgical process so it can only be successfully carried out by highly trained experts. And like any surgical process it is their skills and expertise that we rely on to be able to harvest the highest quality pearls.
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