South Sea Pearls
Pearls for the Connoisseur
- If you are a connoisseur, there are the pearls from the South Seas. These large (10 mm to 20 mm) cultured saltwater pearls are grown in the tropical and semitropical mollusks in the South Seas, around Burma (Myanmar) and Indonesia and around the coast of Australia and across to French Polynesia. The South Seas still produce pearls without any human help, but a lifetime of searching won’t necessarily find enough to make a strand. The market today is the cultured market - only an x-ray image can reveal the difference between the natural pearl and the naturally cultivated South Sea Pearl.
- Pearls 9mm to 16mm in size are cultured in the Pinctada Maxima Oyster, the world’s largest pearl mother and is also called the Silver-Lip or Gold-Lipped oyster depending on the colour of its shell. It is very sensitive to its environment. It needs a warm and pollution free natural environment. It also needs space to produce its beautiful pearls. It prefers a solitary existence and thus it does not do well in mass farming. Unfortunately, due to contaminated waters, this necessary environment is becoming more scarce with each passing year.
- It produces the purest of pearls, an heirloom to pass on generation after generation. Colours for South Seas pearls range from Silvery White to a Shimmering Gold. From Burma, large golden pearls were found in 1997 and are enjoying popularity right now.
- Currently, Indonesia is the most important producer of pearls in the 9-11 mm range.
-
- The main source of pearls over 11 mm (10mm-20mm) has been Australia and most insiders feel that Australia produces the largest and most expensive cultured pearls in the world.
- In some seasons, Australia has produced up to 60% of the world’s large South Sea pearls.
- South Sea cultured pearls are rarely perfectly round and the larger the pearl is, the more it will deviate from the round. With this in mind, when one's budget is limited, baroques are often regarded as a good alternative to the more expensive symmetrical shapes. Not only that, baroque pearls offer interesting jewelry designs.
- Large fine-quality whole pearls of any type are very rare and expensive. In the 1990’s, at a New York auction, a strand of 45 cultured South Sea pearls ranging from 16 to 19 mm sold for approximately $2,200,000. US. The pearls were perfectly round and matched, with rose overtones and exceptional lustre.
