Pearls have a rich and vibrant history, dating back to ancient occasions when heroic divers would brave the ocean's depths to bring to the water's surface these treasures of the deep. The pearl itself is recognized far and wide as the "Queen of Gems" so it's no surprise that these glowing orbs have cemented their favor with queens, kings, and royal families since the dawn of time. A look back at ancient artwork, mosaics, and also sculptures show pearls adorning pearl jewellery, necklaces, crowns, collars, earrings, and robes.India is believed to be the home of the initial discovery of the pearl. A tribe of fish consuming peoples are believed to have stumbled across the oyster and located an oyster inside with the meat. This tribe praised the beauty and luster of the pearl and soon began harvesting the gems.Pearls made their mark on the land of China too, with lesser kings gifting pearl necklaces to kings with more power as a token of good will. Usually, these pearls had been of the fresh water type and looked at with disdain because of the irregularity of the shape.The ancient Romans and Egyptians prized pearls more than the other gemstones, maybe on account of its eerie similarity for the moon. One favorite story about pearls entails the legendary Egyptian queen Cleopatra and her Roman lover Marc Antony. As a way to convince Antony of her country's wealth and power over the Roman Empire, Cleopatra bet the erstwhile Roman she could deliver the most expensive banquet in history. Prior to a goblet of wine, she dissolved a massive pearl from a pair of earrings and drank the remnants. Antony declined the matching pearl, proving her point and entering the infamous queen yet again into typical folklore.Pearls play a big component within the key religions of the world. Arabian royalty loved pearls to the point they made use of the orbs to decorate the Koran, their religious text. In addition to decorating the outside of the books, the Koran is filled with passages such as pearls within the text. Similarly, Christians included parables and text about pearls in their religious text, the Bible. In Hinduism, the god Krishna is credited with discovering pearls and presented the sea born beauty to his daughter on the day of her wedding.As time progressed, pearl harvesting became a lucrative business and fueled exploration all over the world. Just after the "discovery" of pearl-laden shellfish in the New World, wealth seekers from all over the world flocked towards the newfound land for its riches. Still, both fresh water pearls and salt water pearls were symbols of riches that only the wealthiest of people could afford. It was not until the early 1900s that pearls became a possibility for all classes.
In 1907, the son of a Japanese noodle maker developed a system for developing perfectly round pearls in a controlled environment. Kokichi Mikimoto and his wife Ume created a pearl empire that still sets in the bar for good quality pearls to this day. The Mikimoto company still produces astoundingly lovely pearls right now utilizing the practices set in location by Kokichi and Ume. Though Mikimoto was working to culture top quality pearls, two more Japanese minds were also striving to have similar successes. Tokichi Nishikawa and Tatsuhei Mise had been operating independently, but identified similar results and success in grafting irritants into the oyster's tissue to spur the production of a pearl. Just after discovering they were working independently toward exactly the same goal, the guys joined forces to make the Mise-Nishikawa technique. Mikimoto soon purchased the rights to this technique and coupled the men's creations and pearl info techniques with his own.