Genuine natural pearls the world's most famous pearls from the 16th century La Peregrina and La Pelegrina.
- Inna Boukreeva
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
The world’s most famous 16th century pearls are La Peregrina and La Pelegrina. Both pearls were found in the Gulf of Panama and then sent to Spain, where they became crown jewels for the Spanish royal family. The smaller of the two pearls, La Pelegrina, ended up in the French royal family and was later spotted in the outfits of the Russian aristocratic Yusupov family in 1820.
If you want to buy a piece of jewelry set with real, natural pearls found in the sea, you should look for jewelry made about 70 years ago or earlier. Nowadays, pearls are no longer harvested in the wild due to pollution of the seas. The market mainly sells artificial cultured pearls or South Sea pearls, which are cultivated in the waters around the Philippines, Australia and Indonesia.
The cultivation of Mabe (half) pearls began in 1898 with Kokichi Mikimoto in Japan. Later, people in Japan learned to cultivate round pearls. From 1916 onwards, pearls were produced on a large scale. There are freshwater pearls and saltwater pearls that are cultivated. Freshwater pearls are now cultivated on a large scale mainly in China. However, it is thought that pearl cultivation started much earlier, because the first method was already mentioned in 1083 in the writings of Pang Yuanying about Wenchang.
The price of natural pearls was determined by their size: the rounder a pearl was, the more expensive it was. Pearls are natural jewels, and during archaeological excavations in Mexico, pearls were found that are estimated to date back to 2500 BC. This means that pearls have been worn as jewelry for at least 6000 years. Because they were rare, they belonged to the elite.
In the 17th century, there was a lot of trading in pearls in the trading centers of Venice and Amsterdam.
To maintain their shine and luster, pearls must be worn regularly.
The pearl worn by French Queen Marie Antoinette was sold for 32 million euros. La Peregrina was in the collection of actress Elizabeth Taylor and was sold at auction in 2011 for 11 million USD. La Pelegrina was also auctioned at Christie's in Switzerland in 1987 and remains in a private collection.
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