| Natural Black Pearls
had practically disappeared by 1960, a year in which only four or
five of them were found in all of French Polynesia. It was time, therefore,
to think about producing Cultured Pearls.
The Chinese had known for a very long time how to provoke deposits
of mother-of-pearl in certain oysters by placing a Sitting Buddha
figurine, of lead or tin, in contact with the shell.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Japanese learned
how to produce pearls. Kokichi Mikomoto, the great name in pearl
culture, was the first to produce half-pearls, called Mabe (pronounced
"mah-bay"), in 1893. By 1904 another Japanese, Tatsuhei,
succeeded in growing the first round pearl.
In 1907 Tokichi Nishikawa perfected the technique that is still
in use today, which the Japanese call the "piece method".
Instead of wrapping the tissue of the oyster completely around the
nucleus, in the piece method only a fragment of tissue from a donor
oyster is placed next to the nucleus. Mikimoto produced his first
round pearls in 1905, using a complete wrap technique, and later
he patented the piece method. By 1951 he had approximately 20 million
cultured pearls growing in his pearl farms.
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