pearl jewelry has always brought to mind the essence of the sea. People think of big clams, or beds of oysters and pearl divers diving in to gather them up while holding their breath. The image of the tropic seas, warm sun and salty breeze falls away on a full investigation. Uncultivated pink pearls are lovely. pearls jewelry made of these pink beads is rare and enticing. It’s surprising because these unusual pearls are are from the Miami River in Ohio.

The Ohio valley offered up a tremendous number of fresh water pearls and was a booming business towards the end of the 19th century. Pearls pulled from the river had a range of colors including; creamy white, alabaster, blue, green, pink and rose colored. These pearls can still be found today and are sought after because they are naturally grown.

While harvesting pearls by diving is how they were brought to the market in the past, most pearls today are the product of domestic farming. Pearls are created bycoats the foreign material like it would in the wild, with aragonite and conchiolin, and overtime the pearls are removed. The commercial market is made up of mostly cultivated and synthetic pearls. This opens the market up for natural pearls and the pearls from the Ohio Valley.

Before boys spent their days digging through mud looking for pearl bearing clams, the Native Americans of the Ohio Valley were gathering them. Relics were discovered in burial mounds that point to an abundance of pearls. They were once thought to be part of a trading route with coastal tribes, but as the abundance of local pearls became apparent, archeologists believe them to be from the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. These pearls were used as beads and sometimes flattened then attached to clothes. Fresh water beads have been found set into copper work. Fresh water pearls, like marine pearls come in a variety of shapes and sizes. In fact, it is very rare to get a perfectly round pearl. Less then 1% of the Tennessee and Ohio Valley pearls are round. The majority are oblong or rice shaped. Pearls are considered organic gemstones, and both Tennessee and Kentucky have listed the fresh water pearl the state gem. During thelate 1800′s many people had fun wadding in the river pearling, digging through the mud and looking for the odd shaped pearls.

Fresh water pearlsare less abundant today because of loss of their ecosystem. Fresh water pearls need flowing water and shoals. The damming of many of the rivers in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee has modified the course of the river and altered the environment that the clams thrived on. They can still be found today, but not in as abundant proportions as years ago. The fortunately fresh water pearls can produce more then one pearl at a time, unlike their marine counter parts. While the perfect round pearl is rare, they are naturally produced and come in a broad spectrum of colors making them cherished adornments.

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