Zayah's Visual Guide to Pearls

A Visual Guide to Pearls – An Introduction in Pictures

A Love of Pearls

We hope you love our visual guide to pearls, because everyone we know loves pearls! We might be biased, and perhaps only associate with people that love them like we do, but there’s something about this mysterious gem that keeps us coming back to them.

Our sister company Zayah Jewellery has made pearl jewellery something of a speciality of theirs, and create some beautiful contemporary designs, many of which are a modern twist on classic designs.  When we explore what inspires them, we find that a lot of it comes from their appreciation of the history of this special gem, and the miraculous way it forms.

A mollusc such as an oyster protects itself from an irritant (like a grain of sand) by secreting a hardening liquid, called nacre. This forms what we know as as a natural pearl, and the “farmed” equivalent where they introduce an artificial irritant forms what are known as cultured pearls.

The story of how pearls are formed and now farmed along with the difficulties along the way is absorbing. Add to this the various different types of pearls and the history of how cultured pearls as we know it today were first created, and it makes for some fascinating insights.

Visual Guide to Pearls

Rather than write an article about this, we thought we’d start with a visual guide to pearls for now, so you can see in pictures what we love about them.

We asked our friends at Zayah Jewellery to create a pinterest board that firms a visual guide to pearls, that show you where they come from, how they’ve been used over the centuries, some examples of their use today and more. So check out this visual pearl 101 board.