Pearls have been worn for thousands of years and they are the only gem created by a living creature.

A pearl is a hard object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk.

Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is made up of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers.

Pearls were very popular in the Roman times, worn by privileged women to display their wealth.

In the 1900’s, three Japanese men Kokichi Mikimoto, Tokichi Nishikawa and Tatsuhei Mise  independently discovered the secret of culturing pearls.

Kokichi Mikimoto bought out the rights of the other two and started a huge business of pearl culturing which to this day retains the name ‘Mikimoto’ as the premier brand of Japanese Saltwater cultured Akoya pearls

Pearls are graded according to several characteristics, Lustre, Shape, Colour, Surface and Size.

The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes of pearls (baroque pearls) occur. Typically the large and rounder the pearl, the more valuable it is as mother-nature worked harder at producing it.