Cultured pearl Cultured pearl A cultured pearl is a pearl created by an oyster farmer under controlled conditions. Cultured pearls can be farmed using two very different groups of bivalve mollusk: the freshwater river mussels, and the saltwater pearl oysters. A pearl is formed when the mantle tissue is injured by a parasite, an attack of a fish or another event that damages the external fragile rim of the shell of a mollusk shell bivalve or gastropod. In response, the mantle tissue of the mollusk secretes nacre into the pearl sac, a cyst that forms during the healing process. Chemically speaking, this
Cora Pearl In his biography of Pearl, "The Pearl From Plymouth" (1950), author W. H. Holden writes that there is evidence that Pearl regularly sent money to both her mother in England and father in America. For Cora Pearl, money was for spending, for accumulating the luxuries of life and buying her way to a coveted perch in the upper echelons of society. Her jewel collection alone was valued at some one million francs; at one point, she owned three homes, and her clothing was made for her by the renowned couturier Charles Frederick Worth. As her career prospered, the gifts from