Natural
but cultivated pearl produced by a mollusk after
the intentional introduction of a foreign object
inside the creature's shell. The discovery that
such pearls could be cultivated in freshwater
mussels is said to have been made in 13th-century
China, and the Chinese have been adept for hundreds
of years at cultivating pearls by opening the
mussel's shell and inserting into it small pellets
of mud or tiny bosses of wood, bone, or metal
and returning the mussel to its bed for about
three years to await the maturation of a pearl
formation. |
