A mixed bag of abalone pearls.

[Bodecia]

Hello Antz,

Do let us know when you site is up and running. How many pearls will you be listing? Loved the pair I bought from you. I will list a photo of the ring when I get around to having them put in the ring.

Dawn - Bodecia
http://stores.ebay.com/Dawns-Designer-Collections
Natural pearl collector and all round pearl lover

[Caitlin]

I can hardly wait to see some photos, dawn! How about one of just the pearls????

[Caitlin]

Antz
Good luck with the pair you linked to above. They are wonderful!

[antz]

Im having abit of trouble dealing with ebay but thats what you get when you live on the other side of the world I suppose.
In order to get my feedback up so that I can list more items and increase my monthly selling limits I will be open to any offers on my current listings.
My ebay username is antzchch or just search natural abalone pearls
Thanks

[Adeline Leigh]

A wonderful Boxing Day gift to myself just arrived from New Zealand and I hope this bodes well for my pearl adventures in 2012.

Here are Antz's abalone pearls: 1.3 and 1.35 cts respectively, coming in at shy under 9mm in length and 8mm in width. Love the colours! One has a metallic greenish-blue lustre while the other has hues of dark violet-blue.

I've taken quite a few pictures to show their colours to the best effect and I've included the non-money shot of the the patches of crusty brown on the undersides of the pearls. Wonder why and how this has happened. Can anyone shed light on the phenomenon?

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

Can anyone shed light on the phenomenon?

It's protein. In a mollusk, every shell (or pearl) is formed by first creating a layer as a moisture barrier called the periostracum. The animal then secrets calcium carbonate to give it strength. This is the prismatic layer. Finally, it precipitates aragonite to form the nacreous layers for a smooth, comfortable finish.

All mollusks do this, but to varying degrees. Some animals, such as venus clams have thin periostracum, thick prismatic layers and thin nacreous layers. This is why most clam pearls are non-nacreous. Abalone have a thick periostracial, thin prismatic and thick nacreous layers.

The reason you still see the protein is attributed to eccentric growth, as opposed to concentric in most cultured pearls.

Nice pearls!

[Caitlin]

Abalone pearls often have patches of that protenaceaous calcification. I think abalone pearls are almost "digested" into being and some really look like it. That is that soup of protein, aragonite and calcium is not fully digested together throughout some pearls. Dave. Metaphor. You explain it.

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

I think abalone pearls are almost "digested" into being and some really look like it. That is that soup of protein, aragonite and calcium is not fully digested together throughout some pearls. Dave. Metaphor. You explain it.

Interesting observation. Actually, this is in the ballpark of something Ana Vasiliu and myself (among others) are researching from some of my submitted samples to the lab in Spain.

There is considerable evidence, aragonite crystals (spherulites) are created within the cell and pasted into place with protein as opposed to preciptated then crystallized in the extrapallial space, which is suggestive of the biotic complexity in the finished structure (ie) terraced, foliated, columnar etc.

Shells and pearls are built in well-ordered micro-layers, one component at a time per cell. It's really unlikely pearls form from aggregate solutions which catalytically harden outside of the cells, even though this does occur to some degree. The usual result of this is calcite, a dirty word in pearl circles.

Secondly, interestingly enough and to get to your specific point, mollusks have the ability to digest pearls and/or their own shells. I have proven this theory at three levels and these have gained some traction in the lab lately. This is damaged shells. Cracking, chipping, predation by drills are common occurences in mollusks. Cracked shells are razor sharp... even samurai sharp because of the micro layers. This can seem to be exceeding detrimental to the animal's soft mantle tissues, but yet they are able to chemically errode specific areas of shell and smooth the edges.

Thirdy, much like human bone, it's always been my position that pearls give a little, take a little much of the time under all conditions but varied by the seasons.

In my earlier experiments, I put manila clams (Venerupus philipinarium) into calcium deprivation for several months. While they uptook some calcium from the Tahitian algae I fed them, they took the remainder from their shells. At the end of the experiment, the shells were softer, thinner and had noticeable pits, valleys and grooves in the inner layers. While fresh water is usually fatal to most marine organisms, mollusks have some defenses which enable them tolerate rain, rain pools, occasional brackish conditions and landlocked splash pools.

[Caitlin]

That was beautiful. Thank you so much! I am sorry to say I never looked up periostracum, so having it explained was terrific! Abalone pearls are just so - so- organic. They grow through a kind of messy process that leaves a trail of hard-as-rocks-gook on a LOT of pearls. Did I translate that OK?

Tom Stern has a pearl that is my favorite above all other natuerals he owns. It has a huge section of very horny translucent stuff that you can actually see through.In cetain lights this pearl also flashes these iridescent layers deep withing the stone. In fact, even though ill-shaped, thus not as beautiful as it is in a round pearl, I think tis is true "water" as described by Tavernier.

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

Adeline is very fortunate to possess a near-matched set of abalone pearls. I'm not sure how many pearls were pooled to grade those two, but it's probably alot. A coup really, considering the overall rarity of "spinners" in abalone. Normally we see the horn shapes or the gnarly elongated, roughly surfaced mantle pearls. I'm sure they'll make for a splendid set of earrings.

Tom Stern has a pearl that is my favorite above all other natuerals he owns. It has a huge section of very horny translucent stuff that you can actually see through.In cetain lights this pearl also flashes these iridescent layers deep withing the stone.

Tom has an amazing collection. Perhaps one day I'll have an opportunity to ogle and fondle them. Likewise our friend Steve's. If anything, this glowing translucence is probably one of the most common comments I receive about my naturals. It's definitely a good rule of thumb, when it comes to identifying natural pearls.

Have you ever observed operculum? They form the door to a turban snails aperture. They grow in a manner similar to these types of pearls except by genetic marker instead of environmentally induced.

And yes Steve... they are indeed plano spirals

[mausketeer]

Adeline - so glad you got that pair! They're so pretty! I looooooove abalone pearls! Can't wait to see more photos!

- Jodie -

[Adeline Leigh]

Dave, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge with laymen like me. Piano spirals indeed! Interesting that the growth patterns on the pearls are as capricious as whimical nature intended; swirly almost perfect base clefs. It was a fascinating, (albeit, erudite - and I'll be the first to admit it ), read. Btw, I tried to access the url link for lagoonpearls and it seems to be down; thought you'd might want to know.

And Caitlin, you did a good job of demystifying the phenomenon. I always love your metaphors and analogies. I wonder if jewellers grind off the hard-as-rocks gook (quote, unquote) to attempt to get smoothly surfaced pearls before setting them? Well, I won't; it will be marvellous some day to pry apart the setting and still have in hand the very pearl as Mother Nature so intended.

Thanks everyone for the comments. I feel extremely gratified to have these and Antz was lovely in accepting my offer. (There's a lot more from where I got these from so do PM him! I wish I had the moolah to buy them all. Sigh!)

Upon closer examination of the pearls, I do see a haphazard faint (growth??) ring on one of the pearl's surfaces (akin to "eccentric growth" like what you said??). If you peer hard at the pictures I've now attached with this post, you can barely make out the ring (like that of a watermark, on the green pearl) in one of the pictures with the sea of cortez's and in another with the grey akoyas. Wonder if that's the said eccentric pattern of growth...

For recording purposes before I have these set into, possibly, rings, I've taken various pictures (no photoshopping; absolutely raw shots) of the abalone pearls with some of the more lustrous pearls - tahitians, akoyas and mabe sea of cortez's. No significant point/ observation to make other than I thought it will be nice to contrast the lustre and colour of the abalones with the others in my collection.

[Caitlin]

Thanks! Great references! I can hardly wait to see what you do with the Abs.

[Adeline Leigh]

Thanks! Great references! I can hardly wait to see what you do with the Abs.

I frankly foresee botanical-inspired rings for my Abs; gawd, I liked saying, no, typing, that!

Wonder what the rest did with theirs?

[Adeline Leigh]

I am so excited; my Haliotis iris polished shell material arrived and I photographed it with a batch of abalone pearls but, sadly, it can't be uploaded.

In that case, I also wanted some views on whether what I read off good old Wikipedia (hooray to the activitsts on PG) is true:
"The color of the shell is very variable from species to species, and may reflect the animal's diet."

From what I gather then, the NZ paua abalones feed off algae and this translates into iridescent blue-green violet hues. Why is this of interest to me? The other abalone shell material I have since acquired is intriguingly mauve, pink and green. I am wondering if this could be the California (Oregon, Baja and Mexico) red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) species whose pearls must be, by the same token in this naive mind, luminescent pink and green then!

Karipearls does make reference to Haliotis gigantea, a species in Korea and Japan, but I am wondering if the pink polished shell image is indeed that of the said species (and I'd like to see the kind of pink abalone pearls it produces!)
http://www.karipearls.com/abalone-pearls.html

Does anyone have pictures of such abalone pearls and/ or such shell material? A google search throws up lots of info for foodies and at the other end of the spectrum, scientific data (can you believe it, a Journal on Shellfish Research - good on them for the sake of pearls ) but not much on natural abalone pearls produced by the various species.

Here's hoping to the sharing of pictures soon enough.