Tennessee Freshwater Natural Pearls

[TnPearlMan]

I have been collecting Tennessee Pearls for 28 years. They are all so different! Heres a few pics for your enjoyment!

 

[Pearl Dreams]

Beautiful pearls and cool settings.

 

[Abi]

Thank you for sharing these! Super fun settings!

 

[ericw]

These pearls are beautiful and jewels also.
In France, we had a few nice pearls, found in freshwater mussels, living in cold pure water. I was looking for them fifty years ago... Today, mussels disappeared.... sadness.

 

[battah]

Wow, those are lovely! And that setting is really beautiful.

 

[BWeaves]

Gorgeous, and I like the settings.

What is the size of the pearls. It's hard to tell.

 

[Pareltje]

The second pearl is lustrous, like akoya or wss, love it.

 

[pearl-man]

WE have something in common. I have done the same with Upper Mississippi River Valley pearls. see this url for a histroy
(if I can find it)
http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/wmh/id/50925/rec/3
I did the research for this article. URL previously listed here. Most of the pearls are ones I collected.
I did check this URL before I posted it and it does work.
Norm

 

[Katbran]

Lovely pearls , thanks so much for posting!

 

[CathyKeshi]

Those pearls are so so lovely; thank you for sharing! I don't have any Mississippi/American river pearls in my collection, but wish I did; my father and his brothers used to find little ones in streams in Pennsylvania ... all long gone and lost now.

 

[amti]

Are there ways to tell whether a pearl is from the Mississippi River or the Tennessee River? How did you end up with these pearls? Just curious if you found them yourself opening up mussels. The second one is very pretty as well as the settings on the elongated pearls.

 

[parfaitelumiere]

Second and third are really neat especially for this kind of freshwater pearls, last one has a so typical shape!
What are sizes?

I know there still are freshwater mussels near my home but even these would be very hard to find, the luck of getting a pearl is not worth the killing of many mussels, especially now these are protected.