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| Friday, 12-Nov-2010 03:11 |
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Buying Pearl Jewelry Without Being Ripped Off
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Buying pearl jewelry can be fun, exciting and confusing. Whether you're considering a gift of pearl jewelry for someone special or as a treat for yourself, take some time to learn the terms used in the industry. Here's some information to help you get the best quality pearl jewelry for your money, whether you're shopping in a traditional brick and mortar store or online.
Pearls
Natural or real pearls are made by oysters and other mollusks. Cultured pearls also are grown by mollusks, but with human intervention; that is, an irritant introduced into the shells causes a pearl to grow. Imitation pearls are man-made with glass, plastic, or organic materials.
Because natural pearls are very rare, most pearls used in jewelry are either cultured or imitation pearls. Cultured pearls, because they are made by oysters or mollusks, usually are more expensive than imitation pears. A cultured pearl's value is largely based on its size, usually stated in millimeters, and the quality of its nacre coating, which give it luster. Jewelers should tell your if the pearls are cultured or imitation. Some black, bronze, gold, purple, blue and orange pearls, whether natural or cultured, occur that way in nature; some, however, are dyed through various processes. Jewelers should tell you whether the colored pearls are naturally colored, dyed or irradiated.
Clams, oysters, mussels and many other mollusks with limy shells are known to produce pearls. But very few kinds yield gem pearls of jeweler's quality. The pearl is an abnormal growth of mother-of-pearl, or nacre, imbedded in the soft bodies of these shellfish. It is built up, layer upon layer, in the same way as nacre is added to the lining of the growing shell and always has the same color and luster. For example, over the country, hundreds of good-sized pearls are found each year in the oysters we eat. Unfortunately these have no commercial value regardless of whether they have been cooked or not because they are dull opaque white or purple like the shell of the parent oyster. In recent times almost all pearls of gem quality come from the oriental pearl oyster which has a bright shimmering translucent nacre.
A pearl starts growing when some irritating foreign substance such as a sand grain, bit of mud, parasite or other object becomes lodged in the shell-producing gland called the mantle. Pearls formed in the soft flesh where nacre can be added on all sides are most likely to be spherical and the most highly prized. By far the great majority are flattened or variously distorted and have little value. Size, color, luster and freedom from flaws are other essential qualities. Unlike other gems, such as diamonds, pearls have an average life of only about 50 years. In time the small amount of water in a pearl's make-up is lost and its surface cracks. Because they are mostly lime, necklaces which are worn often are injured by the acid secretions of the human skin.
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| Monday, 8-Nov-2010 06:45 |
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Pearl Jewelry - The Story of Pearl Hunters
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As long as pearl jewelry have been known to people, they have been a
highly sought commodity for their beauty. It's only in recent times
however that the industry has taken the hunt for the perfect pearl to
a whole different level. Today, the shiny orbs that we see on in
display in jewelry stores have actually almost always been grown in
farms.
That's a far cry from the dangerous extraction and collection methods
used before the invention of modern technology. In the past, not more
than 100 years ago, the only way to retrieve pearls was by diving in
lakes, floods and the ocean to pick them up, one at the time. The
unfortunate divers who'se job it was to do this, were often poor and
lured by the relative large sums they could get. The diver would
sometimes have to dive as deep as 100 feet on one single breath of
air. In order to preserve air and to stay submerged the longest, the
divers would hold on to heavy stones on the way down.
Naturally, this dangerous activity was reserved for the desperate or
the powerless - in many cases slaves or extremely poor peasents.
Today, this method is all but obsolete in most places of the world.
The cheaper cultured pearls have become popular and are many times
the only pearls available to the consumer.
There are however still a few isolated areas that practice this old
art of pearl diving. Some of the finest natural pearl speciments come
from the gulf of Bahrain. Here, divers still risk their health to
retrieve what are considered the top of the crop in the world. In
fact, Bahrain wants no part of the sale of cultured pearls, banned
from trade. Bahrain is one of the few places on earth that does an
active job in trying to preserve the natural habitat and waters from
pollution.
It's an interesting story and one that continues to fascinate buyers
around the world. Somehow, the beauty of the pearl grows when it's
been retrieved from the depth of the ocean.
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| Monday, 8-Nov-2010 06:39 |
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Buying Pearl Jewelry Without Being Ripped Off
|
|
Buying pearl jewelry can be fun, exciting and confusing. Whether you're considering a gift of pearl jewelry for someone special or as a treat for yourself, take some time to learn the terms used in the industry. Here's some information to help you get the best quality pearl jewelry for your money, whether you're shopping in a traditional brick and mortar store or online.
Pearls
Natural or real pearls are made by oysters and other mollusks. Cultured pearls also are grown by mollusks, but with human intervention; that is, an irritant introduced into the shells causes a pearl to grow. Imitation pearls are man-made with glass, plastic, or organic materials.
Because natural pearls are very rare, most pearls used in jewelry are either cultured or imitation pearls. Cultured pearls, because they are made by oysters or mollusks, usually are more expensive than imitation pears. A cultured pearl's value is largely based on its size, usually stated in millimeters, and the quality of its nacre coating, which give it luster. Jewelers should tell your if the pearls are cultured or imitation. Some black, bronze, gold, purple, blue and orange pearls, whether natural or cultured, occur that way in nature; some, however, are dyed through various processes. Jewelers should tell you whether the colored pearls are naturally colored, dyed or irradiated.
Clams, oysters, mussels and many other mollusks with limy shells are known to produce pearls. But very few kinds yield gem pearls of jeweler's quality. The pearl is an abnormal growth of mother-of-pearl, or nacre, imbedded in the soft bodies of these shellfish. It is built up, layer upon layer, in the same way as nacre is added to the lining of the growing shell and always has the same color and luster. For example, over the country, hundreds of good-sized pearls are found each year in the oysters we eat. Unfortunately these have no commercial value regardless of whether they have been cooked or not because they are dull opaque white or purple like the shell of the parent oyster. In recent times almost all pearls of gem quality come from the oriental pearl oyster which has a bright shimmering translucent nacre.
A pearl starts growing when some irritating foreign substance such as a sand grain, bit of mud, parasite or other object becomes lodged in the shell-producing gland called the mantle. Pearls formed in the soft flesh where nacre can be added on all sides are most likely to be spherical and the most highly prized. By far the great majority are flattened or variously distorted and have little value. Size, color, luster and freedom from flaws are other essential qualities. Unlike other gems, such as diamonds, pearls have an average life of only about 50 years. In time the small amount of water in a pearl's make-up is lost and its surface cracks. Because they are mostly lime, necklaces which are worn often are injured by the acid secretions of the human skin.
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| Thursday, 15-Oct-2009 09:38 |
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Far From Dull and Other Places
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We launched our third annual competition to find your funniest travel signs in September - and this year has so far proved to be the best yet.
But in researching our Signs of the
freshwater pearl times 2009 competition, we've come across another fabulous collection of funny travel signs.
Photographer Dominic Greyer has spent months on the road taking pictures of Britain's road signs for his website, www.lesserspotted.com.
Not only did he track down the roadsigns, but the pictures have been beautifully composed - and shot in black and white for effect.
far from dull and other places
Dull, Perth & Kinross
You can see the gallery on the left.
At www.lesserspotted.com he sells cards, books and limited edition prints by Dominic. "Far From Dull and Other Places" is pearl jewelry his photographic tour round some of Britain's less publicised and amusingly named) villages and features maps, etymologies and over 120 of the black and white images.
"Lesser Spotted Britain" is the card range derived from the book and new photographs - each card has a map on the back, the etymology and some rudimentary directions so you can find it yourself.
Dominic is currently in the USA photographing a whole host of new funnily named places - "I visited Harmony and Tranquility in the same day" - so look out for the new images soon.
Meanwhile, we'll be running the Signs of the times competition until the end of October, when we'll be asking you to vote on akoya pearl which is the funniest - and handing out prizes.
The most popular five photos will win a copy of the new book Weird World: The Strangest Stories and Oddest Images from Around the World compiled by Wanderlust and Bradt.
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| Thursday, 15-Oct-2009 09:36 |
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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao makes unprecedented apology – over on
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China’s Prime Minister has caused a sensation with an unprecedented letter of apology by a Communist Party leader.
His error? Premier Wen Jiabao apparently mixed up his rocks, talking about “volcanic” when he should have said “metamorphic”.
A copy of the note in his own calligraphy to the akoya pearl editorial board of the state-run Xinhua news agency was published on the front page of the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the party.
The note read: “In my article Teachers Are the Pillars of Our Education, which was published by your agency yesterday, the categories of petrology ought to be 'sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic' . I wish to make this correction and to express my apologies to all readers.” Wen was originally quoted as saying 'sedimentary, igneous and volcanic rock'.
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The full text of his remarks to the Number 35 Middle School in Beijing where he spoke of the importance of education in China was carried by the state news agency and reprinted in all major newspapers – as is akoya pearl usual practice for leaders’ policy statements.
His apology has been praised by state-run media as yet another sign of the premier’s modesty and commitment to scientific rigour. Since his appointment more than six years ago, Mr Wen has earned a reputation as a man of the people, a grandfatherly figure who always wears the same shabby raincoat on visits around the country and who comforted victims of last year’s devastating earthquake, personally overseeing rescue efforts.
Of course, as a graduate of the Beijing Institute of Geology, the premier should never have made such an error in the first place. His public correction may also have been motivated by the need to support the core current policy of the party – “the scientific concept of development”.
One internet comment read: “Our premier's serious attitude towards science set an example for scholars; his sense of responsibility set an example for officials; his sincerity set an example for all of us.”
Professor Wang Wei of the National School of Administration said: “Everybody makes mistakes. My respect for our premier is stronger after this.”
However, the tale may be a little more complicated and one media source said Premier Wen may have made no mistake when he spoke to the children at the Number 35 Middle School. The fault could lie with the reporter who covered the speech. The reporter omitted the words “for example” that the freshwater pearl premier used at the start of the sentence.
Nevertheless, his handwritten correction has now succeeded in winning him nationwide applause.
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| Thursday, 15-Oct-2009 09:32 |
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The Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years, research
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Ships will be able to sail in open water to the North Pole in the summer of 2020, according to a study that found a rapid acceleration in the loss of sea ice.
The Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years, the study found, while the Earth will lose the white cap that can be seen in photographs taken from space.
The Polar Ocean Physics Group from Cambridge University compared measurements of ice thickness recorded by a Royal Navy nuclear submarine with those taken two years later in the same area by Pen Hadow, the explorer.
The two sets of measurements were consistent, revealing that the findings by HMS Tireless in 2007 were not an aberration caused by a particularly warm year.
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Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at pearl beads Cambridge, said that cargo ships would no longer need to rely on special ice-breaking vessels to cross from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Northwest Passage. The route would be ice-free for several months every year, cutting more than 3,000 miles from the normal journey from the Far East to Europe via the Suez canal.
“The North Pole will be exposed in ten years. You would be able to sail a Japanese car carrier across the North Pole and out into the Atlantic,” Professor Wadhams said.
“The ice will retreat to a zone north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island by 2020 and that area will be less than half the present summer area. The change in the Arctic summer sea ice is the biggest impact global warming is having on the physical appearance of the planet.”
This month, the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, which is part of the University of Colorado, said that Arctic ice coverage was the third-lowest since satellite records began in 1979.
The coverage was greater than in 2007 and pearl jewelry 2008 largely because of cloudy skies during late summer. Each of the past five years has been one of the five lowest years.
Professor Wadhams, who was on board the submarine supervising sonar measurements of the ice, said that Mr Hadow’s findings confirmed that the underlying trend was towards increasingly thin and patchy ice cover.
Mr Hadow and his two team members spent 73 days between March 1 and May 7 this year walking 280 miles (450.6km) across the Arctic while taking measurements.
They drilled 1,500 holes and found that the average thickness of ice floes was 1.8m (5.9ft).
This was too thin to have survived the previous year’s summer melting and indicated that the area of moving ice had been formed in open sea during the winter.
Mr Hadow said that future expeditions to the Arctic in summer would need to change their techniques and equipment to cope with more frequent stretches of open water.
“A hundred years ago explorers used dogs to haul sledges and then we went through the stage of people hauling sledges,” he said. “Now we have people wearing immersion suits and needing to swim, with the sledge floating. I foresee a time when the sledge will become more of a canoe.”
Mr Hadow said that he had decided to pearl jewelry wholesale change the focus of his polar expeditions from exploration to collecting data that could help to predict changes in the climate.
Martin Summerkorn, climate change adviser to the WWF Arctic Programme, said that the loss of sea ice predicted by the Cambridge study would have profound consequences beyond the polar region.
Without ice to reflect sunlight, the Arctic Ocean would warm more quickly, resulting in the release of greenhouse gases stored in the Arctic permafrost soils. These soils contain twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere.
Mr Summerkorn said that the warming of the Arctic surface waters would accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, speeding up the sea level rise. “This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world’s population and extreme global weather changes,” he said.
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| Thursday, 15-Oct-2009 09:13 |
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Taleban claim further deadly attack in Pakistan as bomber kills
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Pakistan suffered its fourth big militant attack in eight days yesterday when a suspected suicide bomber struck a military convoy, killing 41 people near the northwestern region of Swat.
The bomber, said to be aged about 13, flung himself at one of three military vehicles passing through a busy market in thepearl jewelry district of Shangla, near Swat, which the Pakistani Army claimed to have cleared of militants in an offensive this year.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which killed six soldiers and thirty-five civilians, and followed two other suicide bombings last week and a commando-style raid on the army’s headquarters at the weekend.
It bore all the hallmarks of the Pakistani Taleban, which claimed responsibility yesterday for attacking the army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Saturday and taking 42 people hostage inside for 22 hours. Twenty-three people were killed in that attack, including nine militants, three hostages and eleven soldiers.
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The army said that the Taleban appeared to be trying to intimidate it into calling off an imminent attack on the tribal region of South Waziristan, considered the main militant stronghold in Pakistan.
“It is now a matter of military judgment what is the pearl jewelry appropriate timing in the best national interests,” Major-General Athar Abbas, the army spokesman, told reporters about the timing of that assault. “These are the signs of desperation of an organisation that is staring defeat in the face.”
He said that the attack on the army headquarters had been planned from South Waziristan and directed by a Pakistani Taleban commander called Wali ur-Rahman, whose phone calls to the attackers had been intercepted.
The ten attackers had planned to pearl jewelry wholesale take senior military officers hostage to demand the release of 100 captured militants, General Abbas said. Five of the attackers were ethnic Pashtuns while the other five were from Punjab province, including their leader, Mohammed Aqeel, who was wounded and captured.
He said that the Punjabis were from splinter groups of banned Punjab-based militant outfits such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Janghvi, but he denied that there were militant “safe havens” in Punjab, Pakistan’s biggest and economically most important province.
The military has responded over the past two days by resuming airstrikes on Taleban bases in South Waziristan and Bajaur, another tribal region, killing an estimated 31 militants.
The army has been preparing for the assault on South Waziristan since June, moving about 28,000 troops into the area in the hope of repeating the success of a campaign in April to drive the Taleban out of Swat.
Analysts say that the South Waziristan operation will be far tougher because the Taleban have about 10,000 men entrenched in hostile terrain and able to slip easily across the Afghan frontier. Some also fear that the timing and scale of the operation could be affected by a dispute between the army, the Government and the United States over the $7.5billion (£4.7billion) American aid package.
The Bill, which triples civilian aid to Pakistan, was approved by Congress ten days ago and is supposed to be signed into law by President Obama today. It will become law automatically if he does not sign it. It pearl beads has provoked widespread anger in Pakistan, where the army and many politicians say that conditions attached to it amount to a humiliating violation of sovereignty. Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Foreign Minister, has flown to the US to try to salvage the package.
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| Thursday, 15-Oct-2009 09:13 |
Email | Share | | Bookmark |
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Taleban claim further deadly attack in Pakistan as bomber kills
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Pakistan suffered its fourth big militant attack in eight days yesterday when a suspected suicide bomber struck a military convoy, killing 41 people near the northwestern region of Swat.
The bomber, said to be aged about 13, flung himself at one of three military vehicles passing through a busy market in the <a href="http://www.wholesale-pearls.com">pearl jewelry</a> district of Shangla, near Swat, which the Pakistani Army claimed to have cleared of militants in an offensive this year.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which killed six soldiers and thirty-five civilians, and followed two other suicide bombings last week and a commando-style raid on the army’s headquarters at the weekend.
It bore all the hallmarks of the Pakistani Taleban, which claimed responsibility yesterday for attacking the army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Saturday and taking 42 people hostage inside for 22 hours. Twenty-three people were killed in that attack, including nine militants, three hostages and eleven soldiers.
Related Links
The army said that the Taleban appeared to be trying to intimidate it into calling off an imminent attack on the tribal region of South Waziristan, considered the main militant stronghold in Pakistan.
“It is now a matter of military judgment what is the pearl jewelry appropriate timing in the best national interests,” Major-General Athar Abbas, the army spokesman, told reporters about the timing of that assault. “These are the signs of desperation of an organisation that is staring defeat in the face.”
He said that the attack on the army headquarters had been planned from South Waziristan and directed by a Pakistani Taleban commander called Wali ur-Rahman, whose phone calls to the attackers had been intercepted.
The ten attackers had planned to [url=http://www.wholesale-pearls.com] pearl jewelry wholesale/url] take senior military officers hostage to demand the release of 100 captured militants, General Abbas said. Five of the attackers were ethnic Pashtuns while the other five were from Punjab province, including their leader, Mohammed Aqeel, who was wounded and captured.
He said that the Punjabis were from splinter groups of banned Punjab-based militant outfits such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Janghvi, but he denied that there were militant “safe havens” in Punjab, Pakistan’s biggest and economically most important province.
The military has responded over the past two days by resuming airstrikes on Taleban bases in South Waziristan and Bajaur, another tribal region, killing an estimated 31 militants.
The army has been preparing for the assault on South Waziristan since June, moving about 28,000 troops into the area in the hope of repeating the success of a campaign in April to drive the Taleban out of Swat.
Analysts say that the South Waziristan operation will be far tougher because the Taleban have about 10,000 men entrenched in hostile terrain and able to slip easily across the Afghan frontier. Some also fear that the timing and scale of the operation could be affected by a dispute between the army, the Government and the United States over the $7.5billion (£4.7billion) American aid package.
The Bill, which triples civilian aid to Pakistan, was approved by Congress ten days ago and is supposed to be signed into law by President Obama today. It will become law automatically if he does not sign it. It [url=http://www.wholesale-pearls.com] wholesale pearl jewelry/url] has provoked widespread anger in Pakistan, where the army and many politicians say that conditions attached to it amount to a humiliating violation of sovereignty. Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Foreign Minister, has flown to the US to try to salvage the package.
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