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 Post subject: Cultured Conch Pearls
PostPosted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 3:39 pm 
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Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:22 pm
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Location: San Francisco
Article today from National jeweler:
Cultured Conch Pearls
Click anywhere below for complete article:

Brecken Branstrator for NJ wrote:
The idea of a cultured conch pearl is a relatively new idea.

In the development of all pearls, nacreous or non-nacreous, an irritant gets trapped inside the mollusk and the pearl begins forming around it.

Because a queen conch shell has only one entrance, it is more difficult for an irritant to become trapped inside and start the pearl formation.

This is why it has been so difficult to cultivate them, until very recently.

In 2009, scientists at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute developed proprietary seeding techniques to produced beaded (nucleated) and non-beaded cultured pearls from the queen conch.

After less than two years of research and experimentation, researchers Héctor Acosta-Salmón and Megan Davis produced more than 200 cultured conch pearls. The researchers then took the specimens for laboratory testing.


2015 article in the GIA’s Gems & Gemology on cultured conch pearls


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 Post subject: Re: Cultured Conch Pearls
PostPosted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 5:41 pm 
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Location: Paris
I have heard for several years about attempts for cultivating conch pearls.
Even if these attempts are more or less successful now, I doubt these pearls could be a strong commercial success.
I wonder if there will be any demand, these pearls being more than often rather unpleasant to the eye, unstable to the light, and their main value being the fact that they are natural.


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 Post subject: Re: Cultured Conch Pearls
PostPosted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 6:01 pm 
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Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:22 pm
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Wow. That was a buzz kill, Isi.

Can't say I disagree though.


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