Pearl Information

Natural Color Pearls

Every type of pearl comes in a range of natural colors. Then many pearl colors are an enhanced or artificial color. How can you tell the difference? A good way to start is to know what natural colors each type of pearl comes in. Following are the natural colors available for each pearl type:

Freshwater Pearls – White, Peach, Lavender

Akoya Pearls – White and Cream with overtones of Rose, Silver, Green, and Blue

South Sea Pearls – White, Silver, Gold

Tahitian Pearls – Black, Gray, Silver with overtones of Pistachio, Eggplant, Peacock, Red, and many more.

One note of interest: Freshwater and Akoya (saltwater) pearls often come in black, but do not naturally occur as black pearls. Black only naturally occurs in Tahitian pearls.

To create black saltwater pearls, two methods are used. One is radiation. This burns the mother-of-pearl bead nucleus. The other is dyeing which permeates the nacre of the pearl. Both methods are widely accepted and widely used.

To create black freshwater pearls, again both radiation and dyeing are. The nacre of a freshwater pearl is affected by radiation (gamma rays) as well as dyeing.

In general, artificially enhanced pearls have a lower value than non-enhanced pearls. These artificial enhancements can be impossible to detect without close observation.

To detect dyeing (which can including “pinking”, as well as a variety of other colors), a trained expert can often look down the drill hole with a loupe and detect the enhancement.

There are more technical means of detecting these treatments including ultraviolet, X-ray fluorescence, and X-radiography. A lab typically does these.

posted by The Pearl Hunter @ 11:28 AM