The Tahititian Cultured Pearl

A history of the pearl…

In the past we only found pearls in oysters that we had originally collected for entirely different purposes. We collected these oysters so we could use their shells for buttons and if we were lucky we would be gifted with a unique find, a fine pearl. These pearls were of a high rarity and so were very costly. 

The legend goes that Cartier, at the end of the XIXth century, bought the building in which it is located currently on 5th Avenue in New York, by selling a single necklace of black pearls. 

Adventure novels are awash with stories that speak of pearls and their mysterious charms … Jack London, Hermann Melville, John Steinbeck, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry de Monfreid, Albert Londres, have all written captivating stories about pearls.

If numerous legends attribute mysterious origins to the pearl, a teardrop of a rose that fell into an open shell the night of a full moon, or tears of a goddess … the reality is a little more mundane, its is more likely the intrusion of a grain of sand that the oyster tries to isolate by creating a layer of mother of pearl around the intrusion or that of a little worm that perforates the shell thus creating a pearl. 

In any case, it is often stated that you would have to open 15 to 20 000 oysters just to find a single natural pearl.

 

  From immemorial times, thre were only natural pearls.
They were extremely rare and more valuable than diamonds.