The popularity of artificial pearls is due to its very affordable cost and the versatility of its natural counterpart (suitable for any outfit and any setting).
Artificial pearls are a high-quality imitation of natural material created by mollusks.
Its production became possible with the advent of dyes that contain natural nacre. They get it from fish scales, sometimes make an essence from mollusks. Glass balls filled with wax and coated on the outside with mother of pearl are used as the basis for the manufacture. This technology allows you to create pearls of very high quality, which have similar properties to natural ones (strength and special shine).
Cheaper artificial pearls have slightly different properties. It is made on the basis of plastic. However, it is rather difficult to fix the mother of pearl on this material, so such beads quickly lose their original appearance.
The highest quality artificial pearls are made in Mallorca. It has the same name with the island (Majorca pearls). It happens in white, pink, black, gold, it is often combined with Swarowski rhinestones. Brand products are very expensive, but this quality justifies the high price.
Imitation of pearls is an absolute creation of human hands. Unlike grown artificially, such a product is created without the participation of mollusks.
The first artificial pearls were created in the 15th century. They were called “Roman”, and they were balls filled with paraffin, covered with “pearl essence” (a composition based on fish scales). This technology has been improved for centuries. Today, natural mussel extracts are already used as a coating. In the 20th century, the United States invented a multiple coating method with the unique Shell pearl, which to this day is the market leader.
How to choose, for example, silver earrings with pearls? Even if you know that the pearls are artificial in them, you need to choose the best possible option, since cheap items wear out too quickly. Very often, the selling price of a jewelry does not reflect its true quality. Sometimes, in reality, a cheap item can be bought at a very impressive price.
It is much easier to distinguish artificial pearls from natural pearls than to figure out which imitation is high-quality and which is simply passed for it.
Natural pearls are never perfectly straight. And all artificial is equally smooth. Due to this, it looks even more accurate in jewelry, although at a price significantly inferior to natural. You need to know that expensive high-quality artificial pearls based on glass are cold to the touch, cheap (based on plastic) is warm.
For the production of this material, gelatin is used today, combined with pearl essence, which is poured into hollow glass balls in a warm state and spreads along their inner side. After drying, paraffin or wax mixed with finely ground spar and tinted dye is poured into the balls (if necessary, give a shade).
Then the beads are lowered (sometimes several times) into a solution with pearl essence. To give the resulting layer greater strength, it is treated with various chemical solutions. Finished pearls are stringed. On average, it takes from 100 to 300 beads to make a necklace.
In addition, there is also a method of making pearls using celluloid varnish. In this case, the coating is carried out by lowering the balls, mounted on the needle, in the tray with stalemate, and in some industries spraying is used with spray.