More North American Pearls?

[GemGeek]

Check it out...

http://www.ncseagrant.org/home/coast...Article&id=650

[smetzler]

As well-written and informative as the article on gigantic freshwater pearls from India was not! Great story.

[waimeamomi]

That is a great story, and close to my heart. We had a cottage on Topsail island when I was a child. I remember finding pen shells and being amazed by their size and beautiful colors. I would think those would be some awesome pearls.

[pattye]

Thanks Blaire,
Ditto--a great article!

[Caitlin]

Fascinating story. I wish those guys well!

[Ash]

Nice story, Hope those Guys do well!

[CortezPearls]

The story reminds me of days long gone... when we attempted to produce pearls in everything that had nacre and moved...more or less.
We produced several experimental Mabe on the Pinna rugosa Pen Shell...it was fun!
But the pearls always cracked: such was the nature of the Pen shell's nacre.
I wish them success...if they can solve the technical issues they have a winner!

[GemGeek]

The first thing I thought of was cracking, since I have never seen a strand without some cracked pearls. But they can be very beautiful.

There may be other farms, but only the Sea of Cortez grows pteria sterna.

[Miriam Reed]

How very interesting. Did you ever figure out what causes them to crack, Douglas?

[smetzler]

Pen shell as an example of nacreous/non-nacreous hermaphrodisia in the course of the Nautilus thread. Beautiful shells but the pearls are supposedly suspect in regards to their structural integrity, aesthetics aside.

[Caitlin]

Douglas
That article reminded me of you as well!

In general, I think I have seen penn pearls Jeremy Norris had. Am I correct?

[CortezPearls]

The Nacre of Pen Shells (Pinnidae) seems to be more "pure" (less protein content) than that of the Pearl Oysters (Pteriidae). It would be interesting if a Gem Lab did an analysis on water and protein content and compared it to other species. When I refer to this I am talking about the nacre ON-THE-SHELL (not of pearls)
Anyway, it seems like this purer nacre has issues with dehydration...a tendency to loose water, thus the pearls just crack. I have yet to see a Pinnidae pearl without a crack. When I see one without a crack I just think: it will crack in the future.
Now, on natural loose pearls what we've seen is that the pearls have large quantities of protein, and the pen shell's periostracum protein is more fragile than that of the Pearl Oyster's. So, I believe we have a "double whammy" here.

I could be wrong of course, I don't think I've seen more than a hundred natural pen shell pearls (I own one from Pinna rugosa). And all our Pen Shell Mabe cracked... no matter what we tried on them. Just excessively fragile.

Here I have some photos of Natural Pen Shell Pearls (Atrina maura): all with cracks or other severe defects. Also, the "best" Pen Shell Mabe we had (the only one we kept) the we produced in 1996.

[Chandrani]

That was a fascinating article. Prior to finding this forum, I never realized how many types of pearls are being cultured in the world today; both commercially and experimentally.

It appears Osborne and Bullock have obstacles to overcome before their pen shell pearls become a viable commodity.

Still, "Necessity is the mother of invention", and I wish them success.

[lisa c]

So, you ultimately think as far as commercial applications, it's a non-starter, or at least sorely handicapped?