A little knowledge is a dangerous thing….

[barbaradilek]

Help please! I bought these earrings from eBay,advertised as mabe pearls.They we’re very dirty.( do you know how much earwax ends up inside settings? Ugh!) However once cleaned,I can see no tell tale line between nacre and filling,but also no concentric rings that would indicate a pearl.Am I looking at mother of Pearl used as a pearl substitute? Thanks for any insights,Barbara

 

[Pearl Dreams]

The surface looks a bit rough under magnification; they could be imitation.

Try rubbing the pearls together gently...see if they glide smoothly against each other. Imitation would feel smooth; nacre would feel gritty.

 

[BWeaves]

The backsides of mabe' pearls are usually lined with a flat piece of mother of pearl.

Mabe' pearls are cultured by putting a dome shape on the inside of the shell and letting the nacre build up over it. Then when the pearl is harvested, it is cut from the shell and the dome shape removed. This leaves a cup or dome of pure nacre. This is filled with something (white glue? someone help me here as I don't remember exactly what the mabe' pearls are filled with) and then a flat piece of mother of pearl is placed on the back.

So you won't see the inside of the pearl with layers when looking at the back side of a mabe' pearl.

 

[CortezPearls]

G'day Pearl Guiders! Last year I made a COMPLETE GUIDE TO MABE PEARLS for this forum...so you might want to read up on the tech stuff regarding mabe pearl making: https://www.pearl-guide.com/threads/v-processing-mabe-or-natural-blisters.455280/

And in the words of "The Beach Boys":

I been all around this great big world
And I seen all kinds of MABÉ

Well, maybe they mentioned girls and not Mabe pearls...but it surely applies! So many ways that Mabe pearls are processed, but the finer ones usually have a beautifully worked mother-of-pearl shell domes, but some are just flat MOP discs, others don't even have this backing and you can see the "filler" (usually a resin).
Maybe this Guide I made can be of help!

 

[CortezPearls]

They don't look like Mabe to me, at all.

 

[barbaradilek]

Thankyou for all your input! I’m inclined to think they are turbo shells,the kind that some of us have been fooled into thinking are Scottish river pearls.Thank goodness the seller accepts returns,and she will be getting them back minus the earwax……

 

[Katbran]

They don't look like Mabe but they could be pearls that have a very flat base. I've got some baroque freshwater beauties that are almost dead flat with a high dome .

 

[barbaradilek]

They don't look like Mabe but they could be pearls that have a very flat base. I've got some baroque freshwater beauties that are almost dead flat with a high dome .

What I can see of the flat side shows serrated lines of whatever was used to cut them in half. .I thought if they were pearls I would be able to see, using a magnifier,the lines that would indicate layers of nacre but this looks matt and granular.Oh dear,so much to learn,so little time!

 

[barbaradilek]

What I can see of the flat side are serrations left by whatever was used to cut them,and the texture is granular and looks Matt.
Oh dear so much to learn,so little time..

 

[CortezPearls]

So, this would mean it was a single baroque pearl, cut in half? I would think they might be 2 pearls, and they had a large area that had unsightly imperfections that were cut away...in essence what we would call 3/4 Pearls.