Abalone
pearls are natural pearls from the gastropod mollusk, Haliotis.
They are iridescent calcareous concretions that are created
by a univalve organism, the abalone.
These natural pearls occur in all the colors of the rainbow
with the most common colors being blue and green.
They also occur in combinations of red, pink, purple, magenta,
silver, and cream white.
Although the abalone creates round pearls, they are mostly
in baroque shapes.
Their size range from seed pearls to over 500 carat pearls.
They are byproducts of harvesting abalone in the wild and
they are so rare that only a handful of gem quality is found
each year.
The Haliotis Rufescens
or "red abalone" as it is commonly called is the
largest of approximately one hundred species found worldwide
and produce the largest gem quality natural pearls in the
world. The red abalone prefer colder temperatures, and consequently
produce pearls with the thickest nacre. These pearls are created
naturally when an intrusion of a foreign object into the abalone's
soft parts induces the abalone to entomb it with concentric
layers of nacre.
The shape of
the pearl depends on the part of the body the parasite attacks.
Round pearls
develop in the stomach area.
Crescent shaped pearls form around the columella and the horn shaped pearls develop in the gonad.
Only a small percentage
is found in rounds or buttons.
