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Oct. 17 - Oct. 22, 2004 |
The world's most natural beauty
The precious and mysterious pearl gets its own exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum
By Jennifer Febbraro
Originally Published: 2004-09-26
When I think of pearls, I think of the 1980s and the plastic replication of these gems in long strands weighted down by a tight knot at belly button level. They came in various effervescent hues, including fluorescent, and the fashion philosophy at that time was the more you had the cooler you were.
Today, pearls have slipped back into the wardrobe of the conservative classic look, a virtual staple of every "older woman's" closet. Needless to say, the pearl's natural and cultural evolution has impacted more than just the world of the fashionista and, as charted by the ROM's recent exhibition Pearls: A Natural History, its ever-changing and fascinating narrative crosses continents and centuries in a grail-like quest for the ideal sphere.
Prior to the diamond or any other "cut" gem, the pearl was the ultimate token of wealth and good fortune. It also became a prime propellor of international trade as far back as 4,000 years ago, when without wetsuits or scuba-diving gear, pearl divers scaped the bottom of the Indian Ocean for centuries.
John Steinbeck's classic novel The Pearl chronicles expeditions and the greed-induced lust for the material rewards pearls might promise. The novel's ultimate message was that the tragedy presided over the quest for wealth, but since when has mass culture ever listened to the lessons of great literature? The allure of the pearl was linked as much with its beauty as with its promise of returning a small fortune to its seller, who could barter for more or less simply because the treasure was found, not created.
During the renaissance, these gems could mean a new life for their harvesters, as they were sold to monarchs and nobles in Europe. By the 1920s, Japan developed techniques to create cultured pearls, which initially met with some hostility in the market, their mysterious origin somehow subtracted from their overall worth, but later they became accepted as the stamp of authenticity in pearls, as with most other consumer objects, came to matter less.
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