Freshwater Pearls
Freshwater pearls are defined as the pearls that grow in freshwater mussels in a non-saline environment. The traditional source of the pearls is the salt water mollusks and freshwater mussels that live in the rivers, lakes and ponds produce these pearls. China is the world’s leading producer of the freshwater pearls.
These freshwater water pearls have a great appealing value. Normally speaking, these freshwater pearls are not perfectly round like the saltwater pearls. They come in a wide variety of colors, shapes and forms. These freshwater pearls are less expensive as compared to the salt water pearls. This factor makes it very popular among the designers as well as the young generating wanting beautiful jewelries at reasonable rates. These pearls also are very durable with a solid nacre layer and they possess the characteristics of resisting to wear and tear, degeneration as well as chipping.
The freshwater pearls differ form the other pearls with the fact that most of them are non-nucleated. They are nucleated by making a small slit in the mantle tissue of an old mussel who is about a year old. Then a square piece of mantle is inserted into int. the graft tissue twists slightly upon insertion and the edges are rounded. A freshwater mollusk can bear up to 25 insertions per valve. But normally only 12-16 insertions are performed in common industries that gives you about 24-32 pearls.
The mollusks are then sent back to their freshwater environment where they are tended for about 4-6 years. The pearls outsourced in this way have solid nacre, but they lack the bead nucleus that is responsible to guide the growth process. The shape of these freshwater pearls will be seen perfectly round very rarely.
Lake Biwa is Japan is well known for producing high quality freshwater pearls in the world. It is one of the leading producers of the freshwater pearls.
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