In Chinese folklore, golden pearls are said to bring luck and prosperity to their owner, and in Chinese artwork, you’ll often find a dragon holding a golden pearl in their mouths or claws.
Myths and legends often originate around rare objects, and these golden pearl legends are no different. Golden-colored pearls are extremely rare and valuable, and up until a few years ago, golden pearls could only be found in the South Sea at a very steep price. Until the creamy-gold cultivated Edison pearls emerged about a decade ago.
What Are Edison Pearls?
Edison pearls are the brainchild of Weijian Zhan. His company, Grace Pearls, worked in collaboration with the Zhejiang University for years to develop a new cultivation process that helps them grow almost perfectly round, high-quality pearls in large sizes – with a wide range of exquisite colors, including gold.
Recently, they brought us yet another breakthrough: after nine years of research and development, the first batch of natural dark golden Edison pearls was harvested in November 2018.
A handful of dark gold Edison Pearls
How Do Pearls Get Their Colors?
A pearl’s color is determined by the type of mollusk the pearl grows in and the color the mollusk’s nacre. For instance, black pearls are formed inside the black-lipped bivalve mollusk named Pinctada Margaritifera, which has a think, black inner shell. Pearls that form inside this mollusk can vary from almost black to dark gray to a light silver, and everything in between, depending on how near the pearl is to the shell’s wall. The water and the initial nucleus or core of the pearl can also affect the color.
Pearls are also often dyed after harvesting to follow fashion trends. But after this new breakthrough in the cultivation of Edison pearls, pearls wouldn’t need to be dyed anymore to get this lustrous dark golden color.
Their secret? No-one knows. They guard it with their lives.
We don’t care how they do it, we’re just excited about the possibilities of this new color and the beautiful pearl jewelry we can soon expect to come out of Zhuji – the pearl capital of the world.
Have a look at the Edison pearl jewelry designs in our shop – we’ll soon add more dark golden colored Edison pearls to our range.
