Traditional tissue nucleation is done with mussels that are 6 months to 1 year old.
For bead-nucleated freshwater pearls, three year old mussels are used. It starts with insertion of a coin bead and a 1mm square piece of mantle tissue. The host mussel's mantle completely encloses the flat coin bead. The first step is the creation of a one-year coin pearl.
The mussel is left in the water to add nacre to the coin pearl which takes an additional year.
The third step is the production of freshwater pearls that have a spherical bead nucleus. When the mussel is 5 years old, the farmer removes the coin pearl. He then inserts a spherical bead nucleus in the existing pearl sac...except it's in the mantle rather than the gonad, the technique is similar to growing second-graft Tahitian or South Sea cultured pearls. Both techniques use the existing pearl sac.
The pearl sac, which forms a bulge in the mantle, is a perfect nacre-producing pocket. The pearl growth period at this point can be one or two years. Because beads as large as 12.5 mm are implanted, the resulting bead-nucleated pearls can be of substantial size.
This bit of info should give you an appreciation of these wonderful pearls and the jewelry that will be in the works to come out in Trinkets' Spring Collection. For our new designs, we will be combining these with 18K gold plated findings instead of 18K solid gold to keep this line affordable.
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