That is fantastic! The picture of the pearl fingerprint... Makes me dream of a new kind of book of the pearl - one more intimate with the nature of the beast rather then the 'glam slam' put forth by most to date.
Would it be OK to ask how was it taken (just roughly - was it a microscopic system? What magnification...).
The picture in my post wasn't even of a pearl - just recrystallized nacre. The real thing is fascinating! Especially if one relate the intimate details of nacre with the look, or species of the pearl (which most likely should be the case... I would think).
Was it a round pearl? The pattern in the picture seems rather typical for rotation - an
Archimedean spiral.