Cultured pearls

Cultured pearls are real genuine pearls that are bred in pearl farms. The difference from a natural pearl is that a person puts the pearl core into the oyster (in nature this happens accidentally). The rest of the pearl growth process is natural where the pearlfish encases the foreign body in pearl. Cultured pearls therefore have the same quality as natural pearls and are much cheaper. 

The cultivation of pearls was first recorded in China during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) even then, foreign bodies began to be inserted into the oysters around which the pearl grew. However, the pearl industry did not begin to develop until 1893 when Mikimoto Kōkichi invented a pearl cultivation technique that is still used today.

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