Candled Natural Pearls

You would need x-radiography to see evidence of a tissue graft in a solid nacre cultured pearl. Dave's naturals have a high level of translucency, so they make great subjects for candling. :cool:
 
Freshwater pearls are grafted with mantle tissue. It does not dissolve, but instead creates a void. Graft technicians normally use squares of tissue and very often these voids will have geometric signatures in the views. Natural pearls can have voids too, but are usually very small and randomly shaped with tails or other undefined accents.

The GIA did a study of these signatures several years ago (Sturman, Scarrett, circa 2000) in Thailand.

The Microradiographic Structures in NBCP
 
Yes, Indeed! THANK YOU for that paper! I don't think I have access to papers like that; maybe I am wrong, but anyway, it is great to see them here.

This paper directly addresses my interest in how pearl lab experts classify pearls according to internal structures. There is still a lot of mystery about the pearls classified as non-beaded cultured pearls (NBCP) when it comes to the saltwater variety - I remember when Tom S had some of these of absolutely enormous size, two of which became the wards of one of our favorite p-gers. I witnessed the transaction. These keshi were the size of acorns and I saw at least one the size of a walnut. Kumquat sized. I mean huge. These pearls had all been GIA certified as keshi. At the time, I did not make anything of this.

When I read this paper, this sentence made me alert on it.
The author is not aware of any farms that intentionally produce saltwater NBCPs today or even produced them in the past and no reference to such pearls exist in the major complete or partial pearl texts available (Strack, 2006), (Farn, 1986b), (Taburiaux, 1986), (O'Donoghue, 2006).
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Whilst the latter are encountered less frequently, such pearls do exist and are sent to laboratories from time to time. At this point, it is also worth mentioning that the identification of some NBCP is complicated even further by any drill‐holes present and in fact this very process has even been known to be used on saltwater and freshwater NBCPs to try and remove the evidence laboratories use to determine their origin (Crowningshield, 1986b), (Crowningshield, 1986a).
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I want to read these papers! 1986- this has been going on for a long time!! And keshi started then would be easily as big as Tom's by now, but if farmed, where is the profit in that, especially if every time it happens it is an "accident".

Later I wondered if Tom's keshi had not been consciously cultured by a farm, how could they get so huge? The pearl in residence with these keshi must have been ginormous, or maybe it lost its nuke and the the failed mollusk was tossed into the brink. There are no facts about where these keshi come from, if they were ever "farmed" in the first place. What farm does this? Why the big secret about their origins? Why does no farm stand up and proudly proclaim they deliberately grow huge keshi so as to approximate the solid nacre nature of wild pearls?

So, I find no comfort in the science of discovery that these keshi seem to imply a deliberate attempt to grow them and pass them off as naturals. There is no evidence that this is being done or was ever being done according the the quoted sentence. If there are secret farms that do this, it is the greatest secret in the pearl world.

What this makes me think is that since there were no facts about the origins of the species and what was claimed for them, because the GIA has to work without knowing that, what the paper does not discuss is how they- in the face of no evidence- came up with the category of NBCP? They definitely had a new type of pearl with a void and that was their logical conclusion in the face of not knowing the provenance of the tested pearls.That definitely implies culture, but when the blindfold is taken off, there is no evident culture going on, yet these pearls are coming on the market more often, and more often, they are round. according to some post or other back in one of those threads.

Tom Stern told us he has pearl buyers in his area go out and collect pearls from locals or wherever. The first year he had them all tested and some came back as cultured, some came back as keshi and some came back as natural. He reported all this in his thread. So the world knows that he had what the GIA called "keshi" and since Tom's area of influence is between Sulu and Palowan there may be some farms in the area from which his collectors collect. So that general area is the source for some of thiis new category of pearl. Are there other sources? Who else might be submitting keshi to various GIA's? I am not asking the GIA to divulge personal information, but I sure wish some nosy person would do some detective work.

As it is, this enormous keshi phenom is a big secret to us onlookers!

I can see I may have a big day of eating crow, but do not worry for me, I am part coyote, anyway and eating crow is also a reward for learning something. But I will continue to let the crow rot, while I wait to find the connection, the proof, that the same keshi tested were actually farmed. Tom was quite surprised and disappointed that he had bought farmed pearls, not naturals, that first year and he subsequently reported on his thread that the second year, upon his demand, the results were almost 100% natural. Is/was he the only one with these "farmed" results?

My imagination is running wild with this one; maybe there is a local class of pearlers who deliberately poke young mollusks a couple of times and leave them for the next generation to harvest? No doubt the facts will be more straightforward than that, but who is to say some old timers did not deliberately induce little flesh wounds? In fact, it think it is a logical statement. Those old pearlers knew everything they could learn from personal experience with mollusks in every stage and nuance, and from sharing. Who is to say, at this late date, that they did not know how to create keshi by poking mollusks in the mantle?

The humans of the past were just as intelligent and creative as we are and used their intelligence to perceive and remember the environment in great detail; some of those old Persian gulf pearlers could have probably gotten masters degrees in ocean biology, in their knowledge of the environment, water, winds, tides. Who is to say the same isn't true everywhere there is/was a natural pearl environment?

I wonder how much information there is still living about the old time Badjao pearl divers? Well, that is the kind of project I could spend some time on the net looking....

Also, out of curiosity, I would have loved to have seen some examples of undisputed natural pearl internal structures too, so maybe we can get some posted here- a pdf with a lot of examples?

Also, maybe there is a paper discussing how the GIA came to create the category of NBCPearls? Though the author goes into the history of the machines, I missed where the histroy of the category came into being, unless it is in Crowningshield (1986), maybe.

Anyway, thanks for the big chunk of thought.....
 
There is only one example of salt water NBCP I can think of.

That being keshi pearls where the bead was expelled, but the graft tissue remained. These allow for rounder, not necessarily the freeform shapes we normally see.

I'm not sure what the incidence might be, but I'd guess it's more common than we think. I'm sure most farmers wouldn't willfully pass them off as natural, insomuch as gift friends, family or employees. Then changed hands a few times, it's possible that provenance is lost and the pearls end up in the lab.

To my knowledge, there are no salt water farms actually targeting NBCP, other than me and they're not commercially available yet. It's a process compatible with mussels, not oysters. It's a nice niche actually, somewhere below the quality of SS and Tahitian but above FWCP.
 
My methods could always use some refinement, but it's a step in the right direction to better understanding what gives rise to both natural and cultural pearls.

As Blaire (Gemgeek) alluded, I'm very fortunate to have pearls with windows into the past. I can hardly begin to expand on the many hours of wonder peering into these little gems. Each time I revisit this paper and compare signatures in the views, I get a better sense of these voids, which I rarely see in natural pearls.

For others who collect naturals from unknown sources, this is a peril that must be addressed. There is no definitive chemical analysis that describes a distinction between natural or culture pearls from the same species. At this time, the subjectivity of these signatures is all we have to defend this affront. Again, it's not an affirmation of origin, insomuch as a single point of data to help us draw a conclusion.
 
Caitlin said:
My imagination is running wild with this one; maybe there is a local class of pearlers who deliberately poke young mollusks a couple of times and leave them for the next generation to harvest? No doubt the facts will be more straightforward than that, but who is to say some old timers did not deliberately induce little flesh wounds? In fact, it think it is a logical statement. Those old pearlers knew everything they could learn from personal experience with mollusks in every stage and nuance, and from sharing. Who is to say, at this late date, that they did not know how to create keshi by poking mollusks in the mantle?
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I follow the logic, but not the method. There is no evidence that a singular poke or a nick will give rise to pearls. If the lesions become infected, possibly, but that cannot be good for the health of an otherwise perfect graft or the animal itself. Most farmers take extreme caution to minimize the trauma of surgery and to reduce the recovery periods. It doesn't stand to reason a farmer would risk a premium pearl for the small likelihood of a lesser quality pearl.

Most keshi pearls are disjoined or abhorrent grafts, not slips of the knife.
 
I am sure you are right about the present time, but I was thinking more about ancient peoples swimming around in the ocean or the Gulf, collecting oysters and pearls for food or a living, not people actually seeding oysters in farms. There is/was a high(er) incidence of tiny pearls caught in the edges of gulf oyster mantles, so maybe some kind of natural abrasion takes place on the mantle edges to which the mantle responds by creating tiny clumps of nacre? The Gulf has always produced practically tons of those extra tiny pearls compared to the ones 1-2mm or over. Actually should be measured in inches, not tons- And maybe even certain specialists could induce the production of nacre equivalent size of blackheads in a teen's skin.
 
Oh, one other thing. I can think of one method where pearls are formed in the absence of a graft donor. That would be coin pearls. There are some nuclei made from thinner shells, but not so much nowadays and not what we're discussing in this thread. The other method is by a "self donor" cookie cutter type of stamp. A circular tube-like tool is pressed on the mantle skirt towards the inner shell surface. This causes a circular bruise but does not perforate the tissues. The center retains live cells, not joined to the cells outside the margin of the bruise. When vascular integrity is retained or restored, they form pearls much the same way as third party donor grafts.

Candled or x-radiographic views of these pearls would indicate the typical voids discussed in the paper.

So, is it possible the mantles of a saltwater oyster can be treated this way? Sure, but I don't see any great benefit or viability there.
 
I know those pearling boats had older guys who scoped everything out and knew where the best pearls were, based on years of observation. Reminds me of you being able to find a high incidence of pearls. I can imagine a certain few, specialized pearl journeymen staying awake at night figuring out how to get a better harvest. Tinkering year after year. Remembering other examples and how they worked. Man's ability and desire to figure out how to get a better harvest is not limited to aggy graduates, lol.

Before beads as nuclei, there were no farms, just pearlers finding pearls or rather, knowing which beds should be productive in a given year. If we have no proof of such a thing, it is because no one has looked for it. The way to find certain pearl beds is taught in chants, songs the sailors know by heart. It is well documented that the Gulf sailors knew their way around and memorized every aspect of the Gulf through chants, shanties, if you will. That Aramco magazine has been doing articles on aspects of the pearling life since the magazine began. One issue has a lot of pearling chants. I think you tube might have some too. I got this info from those magazines, but several years ago.

Before beads as nuclei, there was no problem about man's interference. All the pearl beds were interfered with, almost yearly, but the pearlers only took a small portion of each bed in the good times. They knew each bed in their territory well. There were thousands of well-tended beds in the old days.
 
Caitlin said:
There is/was a high(er) incidence of tiny pearls caught in the edges of gulf oyster mantles, so maybe some kind of natural abrasion takes place on the mantle edges to which the mantle responds by creating tiny clumps of nacre? The Gulf has always produced practically tons of those extra tiny pearls compared to the ones 1-2mm or over.
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In any wild harvest there will a greater number of tiny pearls than large gems. 99.?% will occur in the mantles and 1% (or less) occur in the gonads, adductors or other tissues. Two entirely different initiating events. In mantle pearls, flat spots are prevalent, likewise wrinkles. In mussels, both fresh and salt, the two share the same space.

And yes, most mantle pearls are caused by lesions at the level of the periostracum by external factors, namely parasites. Gonadal pearls are initiated internally within a closed circulatory system by other factors, namely auto-immunity, acid/base balance or other blood borne afflictions.

Modern ocean farmers as we know them target the gonads exclusively, using tissues and beads from selected donors.
 
Caitlin said:
I can imagine a certain few, specialized pearl journeymen staying awake at night figuring out how to get a better harvest. Tinkering year after year. Remembering other examples and how they worked. Man's ability and desire to figure out how to get a better harvest is not limited to aggy graduates, lol
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Terrific point! These are techniques created by Linaeus and later adopted by Mikimoto. Linaeus introduced shell beads attached to silver wires into the extrapallial space with moderate success. Mikimoto placed shell bead nuclei into the extrapallial space and surrounded it by mantle tissue using tiny elastic bands or silk threads. That said, they both missed the point of today's technology as farmers employ. It was Saville-Kent who first observed, speculated and replicated the third party graft in the gonads from which Nishikawa and Mise described and later patented.

I can only speculate how the brilliant biologist that was Saville-Kent discovered this, but my guess would be he discovered it in mussels first, then applied it to the single organ of Pinctada species. I say that, because very early in my work, discovered an affliction of the gonoducts within the mantles in mussels which give rise to biomineralization.
 
Caitlin said:
Also, out of curiosity, I would have loved to have seen some examples of undisputed natural pearl internal structures too, so maybe we can get some posted here- a pdf with a lot of examples?....
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Caitlin, did you see appendix A page 19, 20 ? I missed it the first time. they are examples of undisputed natural pearls
 
Yes, thank you Dave for the white paper, it was enlightening ! and this discussion is super interesting!
I too was fascinated to read about the “grey areas” of pearl identification. But what really stood out for me is how this industry / GIA is still relying on old technology (Xray). If I’m not mistaken in understanding this white paper, it’s still on film ??

[Quote: the advent of simple gemological equipment such as Smith’s jeweler refractometer (1905) made the use of x-rays in the identification of any gem material, other than pearl, superfluous”]

Does this mean there has been no new innovation beyond X-ray in the last 109 years for pearls’ identification ?

If that’s the case, this industry is clearly overdue for some XXI century innovation… I was at minimum expecting digital scans. I did a quick google search and could only find 2 instances of pearl scans

1– This fun article about a fossilized oyster with a golf sized pearl.

2 – This GIA paper, that says that this particular type of scan does not have sufficient benefits vs costs.

It might have been true in 2010 (weight of the equipment is 2.5 tons !), but nowadays, dentists have 3 D scan technology in their practice….. so cost and size have already drastically decreased, and if performance is not enough for pearls yet, I’ll bet it’s a question of months before it happens. Seems to me that a breakthrough in pearl identification is bound to happen sooner than later.
Would love to hear your thoughts (and happy to eat the crow dish as needed :p)
 
Lagoon Island Pearls said:
My methods could always use some refinement, but it's a step in the right direction to better understanding what gives rise to both natural and cultural pearls.

As Blaire (Gemgeek) alluded, I'm very fortunate to have pearls with windows into the past. I can hardly begin to expand on the many hours of wonder peering into these little gems. Each time I revisit this paper and compare signatures in the views, I get a better sense of these voids, which I rarely see in natural pearls.

For others who collect naturals from unknown sources, this is a peril that must be addressed. There is no definitive chemical analysis that describes a distinction between natural or culture pearls from the same species. At this time, the subjectivity of these signatures is all we have to defend this affront. Again, it's not an affirmation of origin, insomuch as a single point of data to help us draw a conclusion.
Click to expand...

Is the post where Blair refers to 'windows on the past' in this thread? I am not sure what she meant so I am wondering. Is it possible to ad a link? I may not understand some of what you do. Is any of this farmed pearl void evidence from previous culturing attempts by past farmers in your area up there?

I have only read this paper and it does not definitively say the pearls with voids are proven to have been farmed, or did I miss that part?

I apologize for sounding dumb, if it is in the paper, but somebody please point me to that connection. I need it to add to my factual framework.
 
FP, Do you mean Strack? What I meant was to have some pix on this thread so we don't have to go googling. Sometimes I sound so abrupt because I don't flesh out my sentence enough. I am in such a hurry all the time. Sorry. pls just lol at me and think of me as going too fast to complete sentences.

Also, I did go googling after my last spate of questions. I don't have time to do it but it was funa nd productive. The best thing I found out was the GIA papers that came up in my google, were all PDFs people are allowed to read without paying!!!Is that cool, :cool:or what.

The second thing is there must be a trail going back a couple of decades on this NBCP thing. The Oct 2013 article on it, indicates it is one of the GIA's biggest mysteries too. Ahah! Now I am happy- I want to follow up on this in the GIA papers I can find, unless someone has already done already it will share? I am totally an internet armchair anthropologist relying on 3rd party sources to find my trail. Once I find it, I use their sources to get back to the originals.

I have been screaming about this for more than a year I can remember, begging to eat crow! Woo hoo. Plenty crow ahead, yipee! And let us not drop this NBCP thing and let's be sure to report the GIA's findings, since they are in process. :D:D:D:cool:
 
Caitlin said:
FP, Do you mean Strack? What I meant was to have some pix on this thread so we don't have to go googling.
Click to expand...

No I meant the GIA report that Dave posted The Microradiographic Structures in NBCP
Appendix A - page 19-20

I've tried to snip them as pictures to post them here. This is OK, since the GIA link to the report is on this same post.

Hopefully, this will work
NatPearlXray1.jpg
NatPearlXray2.jpgNatPearlXray3.jpg
Photo Credits : The Microradiographic Structures in NBCP - 2010
 
I did some more research too with new keywords, and also read the GIA paper " Pearl Expedition Yields Significant Result" (oct 2013) that GG posted in a parallel thread, and that you also posted above. so here is a short timeline of techno evolution:

2010: this GIA paper"]GIA 2010 report [/URL]said that Xray (microtomography)scans in 3 D are not worth it in term of cost / benefit

2011: change of tune - GIA announce by press release that all labs are equipped with 3D micro CT Xray capabilities for pearls touting 30X faster results over conventional film and capabilities to store and share between expert. (aha aha !)

2013 : " Pearl Expedition Yields Significant Result" : Collection of wild P. Maxima shell + pearls (776) for analysis and comparison with cultured P. Maxima. with hi rez realtime microradiography and micro CT imaging. This looks to me like a major investment both to gather the pearls and , scan, store and analyze the images.

So like Caitlin, I can't wait to see the results !!!!

However what would be really uber cool would be to have their pearl scans rendered in the software described in this video. Then maybe Dave would have his quest answered to see little critters in 3D .... let's cross our fingers for 2014 ???
 
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