[Casey.R]

Which pearls were affected by the blue blight and when?

I know Lake Biwa produced freshwater pearls that for some reason everyone talks about and that the lake became polluted and it's no longer used for pearl farming. But I've never actually seen any. Not even in photos. what were the characteristics of them?

[Caitlin]

Do a Google image search for lake biwa pearls ..

[Valeria101]

A search... right... Just tried, but there are tons of fakies called 'Biwa' because of the shape. I am a bit young to know what the original production looked like first hand.

[Casey.R]

Thats what I found too, fakes. No real information or pics.

[pattye]

Hi All,

The Strack book has pages 405-417 lots of info about Lake Biwa and its pearls, including numerous photos. Strack compares the colors to those of today's freshwaters--with pink and orange, violet, browns, whites and creams. Many of the photos look like the high quality freshwater keishi pearls we can purchase today, good lustre, irregular surface, somewhat flattened. There were a few rounds produced using mop nucleus, but most used epithelium tissue implant. Varying the size of the implant allowed production of "sometimes bizarre, fancy shapes, ......bars, double bars, cross-over bars, crosses, dragons, sticks, buttons, triangles, butterflies, shapes with a jagged outline, letters of the alphabet, etc," to quote Elizabeth Strack. This is how the bar and stick pearls and so many others came to be called biwa pearls, a usage which she says is now generally accepted.

Pattye
so many pearls, so little time

[Caitlin]

The book..... $136 or so iincluding postage. If you are at all serious, invest in a copy.

BTW the pictures on page 414 show nucleation with mantle tissue. This same process is what happens by accident for natural pearls...

[Mandy]

I think I've only purchased one strand of stick-like pearls before from a bead show back home in Oklahoma. They wern't naturally colored though (they were dyed a dark green). This was back before I knew the history of Lake Biwa or Biwa pearls really but their shape and the way colors played off the pearls is what got my mom and I to purchase some! I think the stick/rectangular shaped pearls can some extra consideration when incorporating them into jewelry; at least that's how I always approached them. I always found it a bit tricky dealing with shapes ourside of circles and ovals.

Hopefully, when I get the time, I'll incorporate them into a necklace project I had in mind to use those pearls with some oval-shaped "lava stone" I got as well.