Public Domain Photo: Dish of serpentine with inlaid gold fish, pearls and other gemstones, 1st century BCE or CE, with 9th century mounts from the Court of Charles the Bald, purchased in 1793 by the Louvre Museum and currently in the inventory of Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre), Department of Decorative Arts, Richelieu, First Floor, Room No. 1, Paris, France.
PD Image: Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutch: Het Meisje met de Parel, old title: Head of a girl), a 1665 oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter and art dealer Johannes Vermeer (aka Jan Vermeer or Jan Vermeer van Delft), size 46.5 cm x 40 cm (18.31 in x 15.75 in), located at Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands. This image shows ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring’ by Johannes Vermeer some time before it was restored.
PD Image: a restored version of Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer.
The painting Girl with a Pearl Earring, sometimes referred to as The Mona Lisa of the North or The Dutch Mona Lisa, is one of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's masterpieces and as the name implies, uses a pearl earring for a focal point.
Though not much is known about Vermeer and his works, this painting is signed ‘IVMeer’, but not dated. Recent studies on Vermeer suggest the image being a ‘head’, it was not meant to be a portrait, though it is not known who commissioned it, or who the subject is. A recent restoration in 1994 has greatly increased the effect of the subtle colour scheme and the intimacy of the girl’s gaze on the spectator. A.A. des Tombe purchased the work at an auction in The Hague in 1881 for only two guilders and thirty cents. Des Tombe had no heirs and donated this painting and other collections to the Mauritshuis in 1902.
Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in depicting scenes of middle class life of his times. He seems never to have been wealthy as he left his wife and children in debt on his death. Vermeer worked slowly but with great care using bright colors and expensive pigments, and was renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his works.
Johannes Vermeer’s modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death for over two centuries. In 19th century Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who attributed 66 paintings to him but only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him now. However, Vermeer's reputation found new heights so that now Johannes Vermeer is recognized as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
The largest known pearl in the world, Pearl of Allah, was found in Philippines in 1934. It is a natural, non-nacreous, calcareous concretion pearl from a giant clam. It did not grow in a pearl oyster and hence it is not pearl-shaped, but instead, it has a porcelain-like surface, or glossy like a china plate. Other pearls from giant clams also exist, but this is a very large one.
This pearl is the product of a giant clam, Tridacna gigas, which cannot be grafted. The pearl is also a whole pearl, not a mabe pearl, and whole pearl culturing technology is only 100 years old.
Pearl of Allah is not a gem-quality pearl, but a rare very costly natural pearl. It measures 24 centimeters in diameter (9.45 inches) and weighs 6.4 kilograms (14.1 lb). It is an interesting piece of natural history surrounded by extraordinary stories and legends.
It was discovered by an anonymous Filipino Muslim diver, off the island of Palawan in 1934. According to legends, a Palawan chieftain gave the pearl to Wilbur Dowell Cobb, an American, in 1936 as a gift for saving the life of his son, who was stricken with malaria. The pearl was named the ‘Pearl of Allah’ by the Muslim tribal chief, as it resembled a turbaned head.
After Cobb took the pearl to USA, it was exhibited at the ‘Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditorium’ in New York, and it was valued at $3.5 million. Gemologist Michael Steenrod in Colorado Springs has appraised the pearl at $60 million in 1982 and $93 million in 2007. Another 1982 appraisal, by Lee Sparrow of the San Francisco Gem Lab, value the pearl at $42 million.
Photo: The famous Pearl Market in Beijing, dated March 24, 2006. Dimension: 1600 x 1200 pixels, size: 373 KB. Click on photo for an enlarged view and save the photo.
A pearl is a hard, generally spherical substance formed within the soft tissue, specifically the mantle, of a living shelled mollusk, and made up of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. The finest natural pearls have been highly valued as gemstones for many centuries.
Precious pearls occur in the wild but they are very rare. Cultured or farmed pearls from pearl oysters make up the major chunk of pearls sold in the market. Seawater Pearls are more valuable than freshwater pearls.
Imitation or fake pearls are also widely sold in inexpensive jewelry. Pearls have also been crushed and used in cosmetics, medicines, or in paint formulations.
In 1914 pearl farmers began growing cultured freshwater pearls using the pearl mussels native to Lake Biwa, the largest and most ancient lake in Japan, near the city of Kyoto. Japanese pearl farmers recently developed a hybrid pearl mussel, a cross between Biwa Pearl Mussels and a closely related species from China, Hyriopsis cumingi, in Lake Kasumigaura.
Japanese pearl producers also invested in producing cultured pearls with freshwater mussels in Shanghai, China, which is currently the world's largest producer of freshwater pearls, producing more than 1,500 metric tons per year.
