Pearls have been valued for their beauty and rarity from ancient times, with texts from as far back as over 2000 BC detailing their use in China as gifts to and from Royalty. When explorers first found America, the native population used pearls in their jewellery and as items of trade. The Romans valued them so highly that they tried to ensure only the very highest echelons of society were allowed to wear them. It seems that almost everywhere in the world where pearls were discovered, they were valued as gemstones and items of worth.

So why were pearls so highly valued? Well their rarity probably had a lot to do with it. Pearls grew in nature and had to be found by divers or fishermen, and even if you found a mollusc that produced a pearl, the pearl wasn’t necessarily round or smooth. It might be full of flaws and an odd shape making it difficult to use in jewellery. The sheer time and effort that gathering pearls took meant that only people of status could afford them.

The natural lustre of pearls also certainly contributed to their popularity - there’s simply nothing in nature quite like the colour and shine of a pearl and it’s no wonder that ancient people coveted them.

Why are pearls so affordable today? Natural pearls are actually still very rare and expensive - even more so than ever before in fact. Over-fishing and pollution have wiped out much of the mollusc population so places where pearls used to be found don’t produce them any more. The pearls that everyone uses in their jewellery are actually cultured pearls. Not quite man-made, these come from molluscs that are specially bred, and the process of pearl formation is physically triggered by people. The supply is therefore predictable and steady, and the pearls that are produced have a uniform colour and size so it’s a lot easier to match them for jewellery.

Having said this, there are still varying qualities of pearl even in the cultured pearl market. Some have very thin layers of nacre (the shiny surface) and are of a lower quality than pearls with a thick nacre layer. We only source the best cultured pearls from reputable suppliers - the better quality the pearl the longer it will last if you take care of it, so the better the investment.

Unlike for diamonds, there’s no industry-wide system of grading pears. This means that it can be difficult for buyers to understand exactly what quality of pearl they’re getting. When it comes to pearl jewellery there are a lot of different considerations including the size and the matching of all the pearls that make up the piece (for example a necklace). To some extent individual quality is less important than the overall effect. However, sellers do have systems for grading the flaws, lustre and nacre - the three most important aspects of a pearl.

The two main grading systems are called the AAA-A system (usually used by sellers) and the A-D system (usually used by producers). The highest quality pearls (AAA and A respectively) have the least flaws and the highest lustre, whereas the lowest quality (A and D respectively) have the most flaws and the lowest lustre. Pearls with many flaws are considered unfit for use in jewellery.

Nacre is the outer surface of the pearl and the thickness of this nacre determines how durable a pearl is. Looked after properly pearls can last for generations but a thick layer of nacre helps - Tahitian pearls in fact aren’t even sold if the nacre is less than 0.8 of a milimetre.