Donyou know where real, true pearls come from?
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Key Points
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Oystersnmake them. Once in a while, an oyster gets what we might think of asna splinter—some little bit somehow gets in between the oyster’snshell and its body (specifically, its mantle). This little bit ofngrit (or sand or bone or what have you) is very irritating to thenpoor oyster—but the oyster doesn’t have hands and tweezers to getnthe thing out! All it can do is use its shell-making apparatus toncover up the irritating bit. The layers of shell (nacre) covering then“splinter” are what we call a pearl.
Oystersnmake them. Once in a while, an oyster gets what we might think of asna splinter—some little bit somehow gets in between the oyster’snshell and its body (specifically, its mantle). This little bit ofngrit (or sand or bone or what have you) is very irritating to thenpoor oyster—but the oyster doesn’t have hands and tweezers to getnthe thing out! All it can do is use its shell-making apparatus toncover up the irritating bit. The layers of shell (nacre) covering then“splinter” are what we call a pearl.n
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nAndnin the wild, they are very rare.
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nEvennmore rare are the beautiful spherical pearls. Some pearls turn out tonbe oval or even knobbly. They are called baroque pearls.
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nThisnrarity means that spherical pearls harvested from wild oysters arenvery, very expensive!
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| Cultured pearls |
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nPeoplenhave come up with two ways to make pearls more affordable. First,nsome people grow oysters in tanks and deliberately insert irritantsnbetween their shells and their mantles. The oysters do their thingnand cover the irritants—and eventually the people growing thenoysters are able to harvest the pearls. These sorts of pearls arencalled “cultured pearls.”
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nThensecond way of making inexpensive pearls is (of course) to make fakes!n“Faux” or imitation pearls are made in several different ways,nbut on this date in 1656 a French man named Jacquin patented a way ofnmanufacturing imitation pearls from blown-glass spheres coated on theninside with ground fish scales.
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nFishnscales?
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nRealnpearls are iridescent, which means that they shine with differentncolors depending on the angle of the light. Other things that areniridescent include the insides of sea shells (which are made of thensame substance as pearls), butterfly wings, soap bubbles, and fishnscales. n
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nJacquinnnoticed the iridescence of fish scales and ground up some scales fromna fish called bleak (or ablette) and then applied the scales in anliquid form to the inside of glass spheres. The hollow balls were thennfilled with wax to make the weight similar to that of a naturalnpearl. n
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nTherenhave been many changes to manufacturing imitation pearls since then17th Century, of course, but many faux pearls are stillncoated glass or acrylic beads.
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nAlsonon this date:
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Monkey Day
Monkey Day n
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nAnniversary of President LBJ saying, “Some geniuses at Stanford University have created life in the test tube!” –when that wasn’t what actually happened!
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n Anniversary of the first humans to reach South Pole
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