The Debate: Tissue or Bead Nucleation? The Pros and Cons of Each

[Mikeyy]

And if you're an oyster, you'd rather forego the bead in the gonad.

No doubt. lol

[Kevin Canning]

maybe not, maybe they see it as a sort of Mollusk plastic surgery?

[Caitlin]

I read somewhere that natural pearls are found in the mantle of the mollusks. I wonder why tissue nucleating the mantle wouldn't work? I know that beads in the mantle didn't work in various experiments, but I never heard of any experiments with tissue only nucleation.

Lacking that, keshi are solid nacre and sometimes they are really plump and smooth. I would like to see more keshi produced in p margaretifera. (sp?) I think keshi has all the advantages that natural and tissue nuked pearls have except they are invariably baroque- which I happen to love.

[Pearl Dreams]

I've read that the mantle tissue of the Akoya oyster is thinner than the mantle tissue of FW mussels and can't tolerate the implant. I don't know if this is true of other oysters besides Akoyas.

[Caitlin]

Are you talking bead plus tissue implant or a tissue only implant? I know the former does not work - am curious about the latter.

[Snicklefritz]

The Chinese need to stop flooding the market with garbage and ruining the publics perception of Freshwater pearls. We all know they CAN be beautiful - but most are worse then costume jewelry.

I wouldn't say that most are "garbage". On my last trip to China (on non-pearl related business) I had no trouble finding beautiful pearls that were exactly what they were advertised to be when I later tested them myself using XRF and a number of other techniques...

[barbie biggs]

Are you talking bead plus tissue implant or a tissue only implant? I know the former does not work - am curious about the latter.

I'd be interested in the answer to this myself, even given that growing an all nacre pearl in an akoya would be time consuming.
In addition, does anybody know if keishi are ever grown on purpose in akoya?
barbie

[Caitlin]

Hi Snicklefritz

Kevin made that remark two years ago. That was the standard for commercial cultured freshwaters. Just in the last 3-4 years, the techniques of culturing were vastly improved and more pearls were decent and had better luster as you find today.

When I initiated this thread, it was an adjunct to the Pearl Plated Beads discussion to try to show that tissue only cultured freshwater pearls (CFWP) deserved more than the bad opinions and publicity they were getting. Right about then, Jeremy brought home the freshadamas, proving my point.

[Kevin Canning]

The problem is the chinese flooded the market with low quality pearls and gave the general public the impression that freshwater pearls are bad and "saltwater pearls" are good.

Take Hyundai for example, they are making some decent cars these days, but they pumped out so many garbage cars over the years that this is what they are known for. Its a similar situation with CFWP.

Its just a matter of changing the publics perception of the product and china has made a lot of progress since my last post.

As Caitlin mentioned, we now have gem quality CFWP all over the place, where 2 years ago they were not so common.

what they were advertised to be when I later tested them myself using XRF and a number of other techniques.

I'm just curious but what kind of tests do you do to test for quality, besides looking at them?

[Valeria101]

Its just a matter of changing the public's perception of the product and China has made a lot of progress since my last post.

You are not referring to organized collective action by the Chinese pearl industry, are you? (I can't think of any such action addressing retailers abroad much less their buyers, but I am far away from all of it after all...)

Just wondering here, whether those mixed South Sea - Tahitian - Freshwater strands (few and fancy as they are) could be making some difference already. The color combinations are so very nice, and their pricing seems to make sense on all sides too.