June Birthstone: Pearls

“Pearls are always appropriate.” – Jackie Kennedy

Pearls are as classic and elegant as the famous ladies who preferred wearing them. As the traditional gift for the 30th wedding anniversary and the birthstone for the month of June, pearls have long been thought by many to symbolize purity. Pearls can be natural, cultured, or artificial. Cultured pearls are the result of a small fragment of material being placed inside the shell of a living mollusk. The mollusk secretes nacre, which coats the foreign material and a cultured pearl is what is created. Pearls can be created naturally in the wild but they are extremely rare and are therefore considered very precious and priced accordingly. Imitation pearls are widely available and can usually be easily identified because they do not have the same quality of iridescence found in natural or cultured pearls.