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Originally Posted by xeresana Will white freshwaters and South Sea pearls also develop that cream color with age or is that unique to akoya? |
Good question...
I wouldn't know where to look for strands of SS and freshwater 50+ years old to get some idea. Besides, if I did find them, who knows what treatment and what wear they might have gotten through ?
I could tell you a word or two about natural pearls: I don't think they 'cream' left to their own devices. However, most are cream because they were never bleached stark white to begin with and the usual natural 'white' of pearls is slightly cream. There are natural ones with the brighter pinkish white color and since these are old, I would assume the color persisted as is. The white-white is rare is jewelry as is in nature, so... no reason to believe that many of those turned cream. I'm mostly guessing - no real 'controlled experiments' to rely on here.
These being said, some pearls are obviously affected by age: turning grayish or brownish, cracking... drying out. If natural pearls decay this seems to be very much due to something that happened to them - the way they were stored, worn etc. The resins used to attach pearl in some old jewelry damages them. Metal oxides from silver or low-karat gold do too. Jewelry meant for frequent wear containing pearls tends to show a little damage to the pearls. Those Victorian pieces with hundreds of half seed pearls makes pretty good evidence: you may find a couple of darkened or cracked pearls in a piece, among dozens and dozens of perfectly healthy ones. And that's after more then a century of wear and storage. Hard to tell if those pearls that aged were damaged at setting or what not. It would be great to have observed strands of old pearls, but there aren't that many just laying around
The scenario is not worse then you'd see for other jewelry stones sensitive to common household chemicals and sweat - like turquoise, or coral, ivory... I believe turquoise to be more sensitive (changing color), and
I would consider pearls to be the most durable of all organic jewelry materials I am aware of, including mother of pearl.
I would love to know for sure that cultured pearls are as enduring as the naturals were. Except for treatment and thin-nacre issues, why wouldn't they be? At least, that is what I like to believe.
Oops for the long post... wanted to explain where I've got whatever conviction I have about pearl durability, to allow correction.