As you have read, pearls come to us “direct from the hand of nature.”
They are organic gems, created when a mollusk covers a foreign object with beautiful layers of nacre.
Nacre,
also known as mother-of-pearl, is a growth of layers of aragonite, platelets, calcium carbonate. The host mollusk produces
a substance known as conchiolin that glues the microcrystalline layers around a natural or surgically implanted irritant.
In effect, the mollusk is protecting itself against irritation so that it can continue
to full growth. It's not trying to grow a beautiful gem.
The arrangement
of the platelets that the forms make the pearl “tough” and resilient even though, technically, it is a soft gem.
The pearl’s strength and resilience is augmented by its beauty.
We humans have sensed though the centuries a lesson in such beauty: out of the struggle of each of us, out of pressure, discontent,
irritation, and concealment comes a beauty unique to the life of each individual.
Pearls
may be thought of as two kinds, depending on their mode of formation: natural pearls and cultured pearls.
