The reason I like George Kunz's The Book of the Pearl is in addition to being a totally entertaining and informative book about pearls, is the fact that because it was written in 1908, the information is almost totally about Natural Pearls.

A personal copy

There is a chapter about "Pearl Culturing and Pearl Farming", but this skill was in its infancy and cultured pearls weren't yet in the commercial market.

Even in the fourteenth century, the Chinese were putting metal sculptures in mussels where they would get coated with nacre, so culturing pearls has a long history.

Many countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made attempts at culturing pearls. The Swedish naturalist, Linneaus (1707-1778), successfully cultured pearls. People from other countries including, Germany, Finland, Tahiti, USA (even in Iowa as in excerpt below), Mexico and Japan, plus others, also experimented with culturing pearls.

Enjoy a few photos from this delightful book.

Queen Elizabeth from England & Elizabeth from France

Adam's Gold Vase

French Crown Jewels

Madam Nordica Collection of Natural Colored Pearls

Crown of St. Edward

Russian Madonna

Even my city, Muscatine, is mentioned

You can read and see this delightful book in it's original format at these two places.

https://archive.org/details/bookofpearlhisto00kunz/mode/2up

On the above link, you can even have it read out loud to you. That would be a great way to explore this book while working on other things.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/63299/pg63299-images.html"

I was privileged to watch these two little guys being born one mild morning in the pasture. The good mama stayed out there with them all day. It only takes "one good mama" to make sure a lamb is healthy and happy, much as with humans :)

The older sheep in this photo is "The General". He's our family pet. He was a huge lamb and rejected by his mama, so we basically raised him in our house and he's been very tame and our farm pet ever since.

God bless and thank you for being a part of KariPearls.