Are these real red pearls?

iwalani47

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Post falls, ID
Hello,
I know very little about pearls, and that's why I came here for some knowledge. Thank you in advance for any information you can give. I found these pearls on a homemade necklace, out of a junk jewelry jar in a thrift store. They were falling off and so I took them off not knowing they were pearls. I didn't even know there were red pearls. The pictures have a penny in them for size reference.
 

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Aragonite crystals are orthorhombic, pseudo-hexagonal and tabular. Light passing these prisms at angles greater than 45 degrees will disperse into colour. Being tabular, crystals lay flat with only slight variations in rotation.

When viewed at 46.0 degrees, aragonite appears violet, at 46.6 degrees, appears red. This is called orientation and thus suggests the term "orient" in pearls. While it's true, we do see some red, we see a lot of other colors too. Blue and yellow predominate in between. For there to be a few red pearls, there would have to be plenty of blue and yellow pearls also, but we know white, purple, pink or gold predominate the field. Black pearls get their colour (largely) from proteins. There are no mollusks known to produce exclusively red (RGB 128,0,0 or even close) pearls or shells.
 
Those pearls are dyed or artificially colored as my two colleagues have stated.
"Red pearls" are not truly red but if the violet and pink colors are very strong as body color & overtones, with little to no green and blue: they do look "red".
The only pearls I've seen that look "red" are "Cortez Pearls".
Allow me to share a few photos...
4 Reds.JPG



These have some green overtones, so the red is a bit more subdued.
Perlas Cosecha 2011 Perlasshop #2 (1).JPG

But, in the end...the color is very dependent on the lighting around it, the person's own eyes...I would say that red pearls are extremely rare, as well as true-blue pearls (also seen in Cortez), emerald greens and deep-purples (also).

But Cortez pearls are becoming rarer...due to climate change and other unfortunate reasons.
 
I was looking for a few other "reds" I had...found one!
perlas cultivadas.JPG

The one on the front-left is another "red"

Sometimes the violet is less intense and a bit more "pink" and they will look like these:
Reds (3).JPG
 
Yep dyed fresh water pearls. I think they look cute, like cranberries!
 
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