#no i wont check if a pearl is fake or not i am asked this sometimes and its just not something im gonna do

[sashaforthewin]

hi!! i love pearls they r my birthstone, would you mind explaining your job a little more? It sounds rly interesting!!

Congrats, your birthstone is the only one made by a creature instead of the earth!

I work for a specialist company. It's like a regular boring office job except that I'm staring at pearls under a bright light instead of doing whatever it is other people do in offices. I match size, shape, color, and lustre, put them into size order, and knot or restring. Most of the work I do is for other jewelers because the wide range of pearls makes doing pearl necklaces in-house very expensive. You gotta have a lot of pearls to be able to match a lot of pearls, it's cheaper to have a specialist do it.

The way pearl necklaces differ from other gemstones and such is that traditionally you build them over time. High quality pearls are very expensive, so you start with one or a few string onto a chain. Then you add new ones, typically at milestone events like birthday or good grades or whatever, and you get it restrung with the new pearls added and have the length of the chain shortened. So gradually over time your necklace stays the same length (or gets longer if that's your thing) and it gains more pearls and less chain until complete. We use silk thread which does need to be restrung every once in a while, probably at least once every ten years if you wear it often, so adding pearls also takes care of the restringing.

It makes a very expensive necklace more affordable by building it over time and the finished product is elegant and can be passed down. But this is also completely customizable, you can do different sizes of pearls together, lengths, you can stick to one or just a few pearls. There's really no rules and you can make it what you want it. It's actually pretty freaking cool how creative some people get. I like when they have a complex idea that can only be explained by a lil hand drawn diagram.

If you have pearls from family, heads up there are very old and very convincing fake pearls out there, people have been making fake pearls for hundreds of years. If you're not sure you can get them checked by an appraisal. Other tells are to look along the hole, typically the film wrapped glass beads peel around the holes. Real pearls are a bit translucent in bright light and they're a bit sandy inside, not hollow or plastic-y. Natural pearls tend to be smaller and more valuable, cultured tend to be bigger and rounder, and freshwater tend to be lumpy. Worth getting someone to take a look if you have some you think might be real. Pearls are natural so don't ever put them in anything acidic, you can dissolve them.