Beauty
is a natural gift, but seductions is a weapon that anybody can
learn to se. Each of us invents strategies, interweaves thin
threads, sometimes imperceptible and often unconscious, from
which pleasure and admiration derive, to feel loved and admired.
Our actions, our behaviours, are often bound by discretion,
by weak signs, by uncertainties that are repressed and hidden.
There are those who prefer to adorn themselves, and those who
prefer to give: a pearl or pearls can be helpful for both the
occasions.
Seduction
and decency
From the
Latin "perula", small pear or "pilula":
the pearl, a tiny sphere, a wonderful product generated by the
defensive reaction of a shell that skilfully makes use of calcium
bicarbonate dissolved in water to transform it into calcium
carbonate. The pearl has always attracted mankind since ancient
times.
Pearls were used for the first time in 2500 B.C. by oriental
populations. There are countless legends inspired by this little
opalescent sphere endowed with sweet iridescence; and men had
always appreciated it since ancient times. Ancient Oriental
populations thought that the pearl had origin from a delicate,
magic interpretation: "when the moon, queen of the night
sky, casts its silver shadow upon the earth, pearl-oysters leave
the sea-bed, rise up on the swaying waves, then the bivalve
molluscs open their shell and remain fluctuating on the sea-surface,
thus permeating themselves with the dew of the night and with
pure moon rays; from the union of these two components the pearl
has its origin!"
Solomon, wise king of Israel, considered pearls as a symbol
of purity.
Nabucodonosor, the Babylonian king, used to wear tiaras adorned
with precious
pearls.
The Pharaohs consecrated the pearls to the goddess Isis and
the Phoenicians had
the absolute monopoly of the pearls in the Mediterranean area.
After the expeditions of Alexander the Great and the following
contacts with Oriental populations, pearls became very popular
with the Greeks and pearls entered the Mediterranean market
once and for all. The Greeks dedicated the pearls to Aphrodite,
goddess of love.
The Romans loved this magnificent gem a lot and during their
conquest they tried to steal from the enemy pearls of great
value to give their women back at home.
Pliny the Elder wrote a book called Historia Naturalis in which
he talked about pearls:
"pearls occupy the first and more important piece amongst
all valuable things: they come to us from many seas, from vast,
far away lands".
Nero used to cover his bed with pearls; Julius Caesar offered
them to Sylvia, Marco Antonio donated them to Cleopatra. The
citizen of the empire used to dedicate pearls to Venus, linking
their beauty with their marine origin: for them the goddess
was "the daughter of the foam of the waves" and the
pearls were the "fruit of a drop of dew fallen inside the
shell of a mollusc."
Pearls became a symbol of purity, humility and fear of God in
the Christian world.
But Persian pearls have always been regarded as the most famous
for their beauty, their size and regularity.
A Phoenician traveller of the seventh century B.C. wrote to
his brother: "what struck me more in this country is the
fishing of pearls. I once had the chance of seeing ; these pearl
fishers at work, off the coasts of the countless islands around
the Persian coast. There were at least one hundreds of small
boats, each of them carrying ten pearl divers. They were good
divers, capable of staying under water for the time necessary
to fill up a bag of oysters which they removed from the sea-bed
with their bare fingers. Then they jumped back onto the deck
and started the proceeding all over again.
The owner of each boat opened feverishly the oysters. A swift
glance and then he threw them away without even thinking that
he could eat them. Unless he found inside a pearl! In that case
he removed it gently with the tip of the knife and put it into
a bag with a smile as big as the pearl itself. When the sun
was halfway between the zenith and the horizon, other boats
arrived on the spot with dozens of brokers who chose and set
the price for the pearls previously picked, considering their
sizes, their roundness, and their light. Those people were the
ones that subsequently resold the pearls on the market of Persepoli.
Oh! brother, if we were to go bankrupt, I think I would gladly
come back here to
become a salesman of pearls myself. I'll bring to you some of
them, for this time..."
Nowadays
pearls are cultivated. The Japanese improved a process which
implied depositing a thick layer of pearliness on top of a foreign
particle artificially introduced into the shell. Experiments
indicated that the best material to initiate the construction
of a pearl is a grain of nacre cut from a shell of the pearl-oysters
of the Mississippi Valley.
The grains, in their different dimensions, are skilfully placed
in the live oyster that is thrown back into the sea to continue
its growth. The treated oysters are kept in cages at a depth
varying from 20 to 30 meters. The pearls are checked many times
a year and after a period of 3-7 years, the grains result covered
with a layer of nacre two millimetre thick, and at that stage
the gathering begins.
Cultivated or natural, the pearl is classified as one of the
major gems: if the
diamond is the "King", the pearl is undoubtedly the
"Queen" of gems.
