Myanmar’s Inle lake is a place which fascinated me because of the life lived on water. Houses float on water, you need to take a boat to get to a neighbour’s place, children seem to take boats to school, there are floating farms, and the staple food is a lot of fish and rice. A odd thing is that traditional handicrafts include silverwork; the silver was brought from nearby mines. The silversmiths have now expanded into other kinds of jewellery.

Unfortunately we were there in an extremely rainy week. As a result, I spent a lot of time indoors, and part of it was in a jeweller’s workshop. My eyes snagged on the pearls. I’d never paid attention to pearls before, but in this watery light I could understand why painters had spent effort on getting the light on pearls. It was truly fascinating to watch how they react to changes of light: glowing yellow in filtered sunlight, changing to blue in shadow.

I had no idea that the pearls had to be separated from the mother with a tiny knife: a caesarean section! I learnt that pearls are cysts formed in the inner surface of an oyster or mussel shell, formed in response to irritants. The material of the pearl and the inner surface of the shell, the mother of pearl, are very similar. They are layers of a mineral (largely calcite and aragonite) alternating with very thin organic layers, containing the cells and genes required to secrete the next layer outwards. The concentric shells of mineral, each between half and a third of a micrometer thick, refract and diffuse incident light to give that characteristic sheen that people love. Pearls and the mother of pearl are great reasons to shoot close ups.
Beautiful, fascinating, informative. Excellent.
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Thanks
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Well of course we’ve all heard of mother of pearl, and I did know they were grown from irritants inside the shell but I never heard them called daughters and I loved that! Is the image you included one that really grew that way, or were the “daughters” placed in there? In any case, loved your pearl-y post and images IJ
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Thanks. That’s how the pearls grow. I was quite surprised too when I saw this
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Thanks for participating in this week’s challenge and the education on pearls–my birthstone! I will appreciate them more now. Amazing photography!
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Thank you. A pleasure to join in
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So interesting!
janet
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Thank you
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Just wonderful and informative – a real treat!
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Thanks
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Like Tina above, I loved the reference to daughters. I had a general knowledge of pearls but did not realize they had to be separated from the shell mother.
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It was a surprise to me too
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Wow, beautiful pearls! One of favourites for necklaces and ear rings!
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Interesting information. For once I already knew something you shared 😉
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🙂 This was new to me
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I enjoyed this post immensely for its insights and your easy way of passing on the information. I adore pearls, wear them every day as one should, and this post was right down my street as I didn’t know about the daughters either. How lovely for you to have seen that jeweller work.
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Thanks very much. It was fascinating to see the artisans at work
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