Any thoughts please…

[barbaradilek]

I can’t call you Dave,it’s like calling your brain surgeon Kev…I can’t think there’s anyone who’s followed this post who hasn’t learned something new.It’s been a great learning curve.I will hopefully past the X-ray images when I get them,for us all to see what Dave was describing.but thanks to every one for their input.Onward and upward!

 

[CathyKeshi]

Love everything about this thread, Barbaradilek ... especially the Transport and Bread Roll report Now I wish to visit Scotland even more!

 

[MotherOfPearlTrumpet]

Oh, how I WISH I could hear your Scottish accent through the typed words! My visit to your beautiful land was one of the highlights of my travel life. I would go back in a heartbeat! So many wonderful people and such beautiful country. I had NO IDEA pearls could be found, naturally or otherwise, in the cold waters of Scotland. So incredibly interesting.

 

[barbaradilek]

Dreadfully sorry to disappoint, but no Scottish accent,but lots of Scottish vocabulary.So many dialect words are an echo of ancient Celtic,with,believe it or not,some nouns from Persia.There now,a potted language lesson on the pearl forum.We live a short walk from the North Sea,,looking onto the Bass Rock and an ancient castle,doesn’t get much better! Or colder!

 

[CortezPearls]

Thanks for the clarification.Iv spent an interesting hour with Kunz,but could only discover accounts of saltwater pearl harvests,nothing about freshwater pearls in India .If Dave sees this ,can he give an educated guess if the pearls would have come from elsewhere and been distributed from India? When was culturing this kind of pearl started? You have got me intrigued now.The description “ low grade” makes the heart sink,but the colours and lustre havnt changed since Dave’s expert accessment so I will still love them…..

Just a couple of years ago I was hired by an NGO to work for Pakistan on a Pearl Farming Project. I was supposed to go there and stay for a few months, but COVID...well, got in the way!
The research I had to do remotely (with the help of many people, including PhD student Sumaira Kathoon, to whom I owe a lot for her assistance) hinged on a lot of information coming from the former British Mandate in India (when Pakistan was still a Province) and there was very little information about natural pearls and most was from saltwater pearls.
The British were known for recording and registering EVERYTHING, but records can be damaged by time and the elements. Still, that information was scourged from the libraries in Islamabad and even in India.
After this research, I believe that freshwater pearls did not really amount to much, maybe due to their size, quality and QUANTITY. Saltwater pearls from the Lingah (Akoya) oysters was the main source for pearls in that area.

 

[barbaradilek]

Douglas,thankyou for another thread to the weave of this story.Iv had no reply to my request for an exray for my pearls.Possibly my dentist is not that friendly after all….

 

[barbaradilek]

If anyone out there is still awake at the end of this thread( dentist was no help,will try and find another one) I have a a weird P.S.
A friend visited me yesterday with her 94 year old mother,and I was telling them about all your comments.Suddenly old lady says “ I have some Scottish river pearls” Daughter suggests she has pearls bought in Scotland that are freshwater .Mother replies I know what I mean! and proceeds to tell about a visit to a highland village fete in the 70s,and the purchase of a strand of
lumpy pearls from an old lady who had a table top stall in the village hall.Lady said her grandfather had a collection of pearls that he had found when he was a boy,and had them made into a necklace for the lady’s mother,but she had never liked them,and was selling them towards repairs to the local church.Friends mum had paid £15.00 for them,and thinks they might be in the bottom of the wardrobe or that vase that sits on the hallway window ledge…..She had no idea that they might have any real value.old lady lives in Yorkshire,so daughter is under strict instructions to search when she returns aged parent home.We wait with bated breath…..

 

[MotherOfPearlTrumpet]

If anyone out there is still awake at the end of this thread( dentist was no help,will try and find another one) I have a a weird P.S.
A friend visited me yesterday with her 94 year old mother,and I was telling them about all your comments.Suddenly old lady says “ I have some Scottish river pearls” Daughter suggests she has pearls bought in Scotland that are freshwater .Mother replies I know what I mean! and proceeds to tell about a visit to a highland village fete in the 70s,and the purchase of a strand of
lumpy pearls from an old lady who had a table top stall in the village hall.Lady said her grandfather had a collection of pearls that he had found when he was a boy,and had them made into a necklace for the lady’s mother,but she had never liked them,and was selling them towards repairs to the local church.Friends mum had paid £15.00 for them,and thinks they might be in the bottom of the wardrobe or that vase that sits on the hallway window ledge…..She had no idea that they might have any real value.old lady lives in Yorkshire,so daughter is under strict instructions to search when she returns aged parent home.We wait with bated breath…..

COOL! Can't wait to hear what happens!!!

 

[CathyKeshi]

Of course we're still awake barbaradlek, waiting with bated breath along with you !

 

[CortezPearls]

I am certainly piqued at the possibility of gazing at some authentic Scottish pearls.

 

[barbaradilek]

Yet another P.S.The dentist has come up trumps!( not the ex presidential kind..)she’s happy to take my pearls as a private patient,but as they don’t have tooth ache they are categorised as non urgent,and will have to wait till the end of May.Old lady back home to Yorkshire,so am waiting to hear if she finds these intriguing pearls…

 

[MotherOfPearlTrumpet]

Yet another P.S.The dentist has come up trumps!( not the ex presidential kind..)she’s happy to take my pearls as a private patient,but as they don’t have tooth ache they are categorised as non urgent,and will have to wait till the end of May.Old lady back home to Yorkshire,so am waiting to hear if she finds these intriguing pearls…

Bahahaha, non-urgent "pearl X-Rays" as a Private Patient. How much will that cost?
Perhaps you can find a way to attach some of them to YOUR teeth and get them included on the National Plan...
Loving this thread...

 

[CortezPearls]

Here in Mexico we have more Dentists than taco stands and beer sellers...you can basically walk into one of the offices (just less than 1 mile from my house there are 4 such places) and ask them to take the x-rays...pay about $200 pesos per item ($7 dollars) and get the digital images.
These are some that my friend Edgar took recently:

Those are cultured pearls of course.

 

[barbaradilek]

Well,here goes with the frustratingly bad news….Old lady and daughter searched every nook and cranny…then the ancient worthy remembers that possibly a few years ago she took some jewellry she no longer wore to the local charity shop…cannt quite remember,but pearls came into it somehow.So somewhere inYorkshire there may well be an oblivious wearer of Scottish river pearls..or not.AND WE WONT KNOW!!Aaaaargh!!!!! End of rant,off to lie down in a darkened room and sulk.

 

[jshepherd]

Well,here goes with the frustratingly bad news….Old lady and daughter searched every nook and cranny…then the ancient worthy remembers that possibly a few years ago she took some jewellry she no longer wore to the local charity shop…cannt quite remember,but pearls came into it somehow.So somewhere inYorkshire there may well be an oblivious wearer of Scottish river pearls..or not.AND WE WONT KNOW!!Aaaaargh!!!!! End of rant,off to lie down in a darkened room and sulk.

Oh no!!!

 

[CortezPearls]

Well,here goes with the frustratingly bad news….Old lady and daughter searched every nook and cranny…then the ancient worthy remembers that possibly a few years ago she took some jewellry she no longer wore to the local charity shop…cannt quite remember,but pearls came into it somehow.So somewhere inYorkshire there may well be an oblivious wearer of Scottish river pearls..or not.AND WE WONT KNOW!!Aaaaargh!!!!! End of rant,off to lie down in a darkened room and sulk.

Saddened to hear this!

 

[barbaradilek]

Well,here I am again,after the trip to the dentist,first time I haven’t spent 10 minutes flossing before a visit!.Here is the exray of a group of the pearls,plus an image of the same pearls.The biggest pearl in the group is 3 mm long,how would tiny pearls that size be seeded to start them off?( don’t ask the cost for the exray,just be aware I’m considering a second mortgage)

 

[CortezPearls]

Wow! Nice xray. I believe it did the job.
The pearls seem to display traits of natural pearls, some seem more "tissue nucleated" (there are some overlapping traits here and there) but due to size and their looks I would believe they are natural.

 

[barbaradilek]

Oh boy! Thank you Douglas,for your opinion,it will be interesting to see what other opinions surface,but already I
like yours best.

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

The pearls seem to display traits of natural pearls, some seem more "tissue nucleated" (there are some overlapping traits here and there) but due to size and their looks I would believe they are natural.

The dentist did well to attain discernible views.

Agreed, although there are overlapping traits, these are in the minority. Even in well matched freshwater strands, I'd expect deviation from uniformity in a minor percentage of pieces (even high as 50%), where pearls in natural strands tend to be largely unique from one another.

Additionally, these pearls appear the same age, approximately two years, indicating a single brood year. Naturals tend to be smaller, hence older to meet size grading. I broadly expect natural pearls in strands to range from 3-7 years.

For those reasons, I am certain these are cultured fresh water pearls. I'm sorry to disappoint, but kudos to your efforts and learning all the same.