The mollusk used to produce saltwater cultured pearls. It is found in Japan, China, throughout East Asia, the Indo-Pacific area, the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Mediterranean Sea, South Africa and in the Caribbean.

Cultivated with Hyriopsis schlegeli in Lake Biwa, Japan, the country's largest freshwater lake. Environmental conditions have contributed to the demise of pearl production. Chinese "Biwa" have the characteristic softly rounded rectangular shape and are usually called "Biwa" even though they are not from Japan.

Commonly used abbreviation for freshwater pearls. CFWP is technically the correct form indicating that the pearls are cultured freshwater pearls.

Technicians who cut strips of mantle tissue and insert it into the mussel or mollusk.

The Chinese "triangle mussel" used as both donor of the mantle tissue and for culturing freshwater pearls.

The interplay of light and color on the surface of the pearls in which the reflection and interference of light waves produce a rainbow of changing color. This is a component of orient.

The most important quality in evaluating the beauty of a pearl. It is the reflection of light on the surface layers of nacre. The brightest reflections are the most desirable.

Chiefly salt water invertebrates with a mantle, a soft body, and a protective calcareous shell pearls are grown in oysters, clams and abalone, all mollusks.

The tissue surrounding the soft body of a mollusk is also known as the epithelium. It is made of epithelial cells that secrete the nacre that forms the shell and forms the pearl sacs. In this way, the mollusk protects its delicate soft tissues from irritation or infection.

A generic name for certain types of freshwater bivalve mollusks with a dark, elongated shell. Most freshwater pearls are cultivated from the freshwater mussel family, Unionide. Today, the species most widely used is Hyriopsis cumingi.

The combination of microscopically think platelets of calcium carbonate crystals that are cemented together by conchiolin, an organic protein glue that creates nacre. This is the substance of which pearls are composed.

Most freshwater pearls are tissue-nucleated using the mantle tissue of the mollusk. Some are shell-nucleated using a piece of preformed shell and a piece of mantle tissue. These are typically pearls in specific shapes of coins, squares, hearts, etc. Most saltwater pearls are implanted with a preformed sphere of shell and a piece of mantle tissue as well.

As light rays strike the surface of a pearl, it interacts with each microscopic layer in a slightly different way. This interference causes light to break up into its component colors, much like a prism. This creates this rainbow effect or orient.

A bivalve, saltwater mollusk. This is used for cultivating South Sea, Tahitian, Philippine and Akoya pearls.

A nacreous growth that forms around an irritant such as a piece of tissue and/or bead in order to protect the mollusk, and produces a pearl. If the irritant occurs naturally, the pearl is a natural/genuine pearl. Most pearls in the marketplace are grown by man and are cultured pearls

An operation where mussels are bred and grown in captivity for producing cultured pearls. Another farm may nucleate them and then several other farms may tend to them until the cultured pearls are ready to be harvested.

cultivation or pearl farming: the practice of inducing pearl formation in mussels/oysters by implanting with tissue and/or shell.

Mollusk that is used to produce the Tahitian black pearl found in Tahiti, the Cook Islands and other parts of the South Seas.

Akamatsu, Shigeru, Zansheng, Li Tajima, Moses, Thomas M., & Scarratt, Kenneth, "The Current Status of Chinese Freshwater Cultured Pearls," pp.96-113, Gems & Gemology, Summer 2001, Volume XXXVII. GIA, Carlsbad, CA
92008

GIA Course on Pearls, Carlsbad, CA 92008, 1999

Joyce, Kristin & Addison, Shellei, Pearls, Ornament & Obsession, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY 10020, 1999

Landman, Neil H., Mikkelsen, Paula M., Bieler, Rudiger & Bronson, Bennet, Pearls: A Natural History, Harry N Abrams, Inc. in association with The American Museum of Natural History & The Field Museum, New York, NY, 2001

Muller, Andy, for the Golay Buchel Group, Cultured Pearls, the First Hundred Years, International Ad Co., Osaka, Japan, 1997

Gail Brett Levine, GG Publisher, Auction Market Resource - the book.  Your prime sources for prices of gems and jewelry sold at auction.