Pearl education
The four types of cultured pearl
Almost every pearl sold anywhere in the world comes from one of four mollusks. Learn to tell them apart and the whole category stops being confusing.
Akoya, freshwater, Tahitian and South Sea. Four animals, four kinds of water, and four looks that stop being interchangeable once you can see the difference.
A word about counting, because you will see other numbers. Some lists say five, splitting South Sea into white and golden. Those are two varieties of one oyster. Others add Fijian as a separate type, but Fijian pearls come from a different variety of the same oyster as Tahitian. Both of those are variety and origin distinctions rather than different animals, and both matter commercially, so they get their own sections and their own pages below.
I have bought all four at the source for close to thirty years and visited pearl farms in nine countries. What follows is how I keep them straight.
~ Jeremy Shepherd, Founder and CEO of Pearl Paradise
All four, one photograph
At true scale
Every pearl below is real and photographed against every other at true relative scale. We lined them up ourselves, because nothing accurate existed.
| Factor | Akoya | Freshwater | Tahitian | South Sea |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mollusk | Pinctada fucata martensii | Hyriopsis cumingii and hybrids | Pinctada margaritifera var. cumingii, black-lip | Pinctada maxima, silver-lip and gold-lip |
| Water | Saltwater | Freshwater | Saltwater | Saltwater |
| Farmed in | Japan, with smaller production in China and Vietnam | China | French Polynesia. The typica variety is farmed in Fiji | Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines |
| Usual size | 6.0 to 8.0 mm | 6.0 to 12.0 mm | 8.0 to 13.0 mm | 9.0 to 16.0 mm |
| Natural color | White and cream, rose or silver overtone. Natural blue is rare | White, pink, peach, lavender. Saturated colors are rare | Silver through gray, green, aubergine, near black | White, silver and cream, or champagne through deep gold |
| Time in water | Ten months at minimum, eighteen to twenty-four when well grown | One to seven years | Around eighteen months to two years | At least two years, often longer |
| Pearls per animal | One or two | Dozens | One | One |
| Known for | The sharpest luster of any pearl | Range, and value for money | Natural dark color and overtone | Size, and thick nacre |
Averaged across all production, South Sea sits first by value, then Tahitian, then akoya, then freshwater. That ranking is close to useless when you are actually shopping, because the ranges overlap heavily. A fine akoya strand costs more than a mediocre Tahitian one.
One at a time
The four, and where each one earns its price
Type one
Akoya
Pinctada fucata martensii · Saltwater · Japan
The pearl most people picture when they picture pearls. White, round, and sharper in luster than anything else that comes out of the water. On a fine akoya the reflection is hard enough to read the shape of a light bulb in.
That luster is a function of cold water and time. When the water is cold the oyster's metabolism slows and nacre goes down in fine, dense layers, which is the structure that produces the mirror. Pearls pulled early look similar at the counter and do not last.
Akoya are the smallest of the four because the oyster is. Most production sits between 6.0 and 8.0 mm, and above 10 mm is exceptional. Almost all of it is white. Natural blue akoya, like the strand along the edge of the photograph, is genuinely rare and is not dyed.
Type two
Freshwater
Hyriopsis cumingii and hybrids · Freshwater · China
The only one of the four grown in a mussel rather than an oyster, and the only one that is routinely solid nacre all the way through, because much of it is grown without a bead.
A freshwater mussel can carry dozens of pearls at once where an akoya oyster carries one or two. That single fact explains most of the price difference between them, and it is why freshwater is where almost everyone should start.
It also gives you the natural pastels, pink, peach and lavender, that you cannot get in any other type at any price. The finest of it, which we grade as Freshadama, is difficult to tell from fine akoya.
Type three
Tahitian
Pinctada margaritifera var. cumingii, the black-lip · Saltwater · French Polynesia
Called black pearls, which is only roughly true. Body color runs from pale silver through gray, green and aubergine to near black, and over the top of that sits an overtone that moves as the pearl turns.
The color is entirely natural and comes from the shell. Donor tissue from a black-lip oyster forms the pearl sac, and the nacre it lays down carries that shell's character into the pearl.
Tahitian names both an origin and a variety. A second variety of the same species, typica, is farmed in Fiji: a smaller animal with warmer color in the shell, producing gold, bronze and green rather than the greens and aubergines of French Polynesia. Those are sold as Fijian pearls, and we carry them.
One other place produces naturally dark pearls in small numbers, the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, from a different animal entirely. Outside those three, a pearl sold as black has been dyed or irradiated.
Type four
South Sea
Pinctada maxima, silver-lip and gold-lip · Saltwater · Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines
The largest and most valuable pearls farmed, grown in an oyster the size of a dinner plate and left in the water at least two years. They carry the thickest nacre of any cultured pearl by a wide margin.
Their luster is different in character from an akoya rather than lesser. South Sea nacre forms in larger platelets, so the light comes back broad and satiny instead of sharp. The photograph at the top of this page has both: the top strand is akoya and the one below it is white South Sea. Once you have seen them together you will not confuse the two again.
White and silver grow in the silver-lipped variety, farmed mainly along the Kimberley coast of Western Australia. Golden grows in the gold-lipped variety, mainly in the Philippines and Indonesia. Same species, different variety, and different enough commercially that we keep a separate page for each.
Why the count keeps changing
Type, origin and variety are three different things
Most of the confusion about how many pearl types exist comes from mixing up three questions: which animal grew it, where it was farmed, and which variety of that animal was used. The trade uses all three as if they were one, and the result is lists that count anywhere from four to seven.
Tahitian and Fijian are two varieties of one species. Both are Pinctada margaritifera: French Polynesia farms cumingii, Fiji farms typica, which is a smaller animal with warmer color in the shell. Fiji produces gold and bronze alongside the greens, and far less of it. The names are worth keeping because the pearls do look different, but they are varieties and origins, not separate species.
White and golden South Sea are the same species in different varieties. Both are Pinctada maxima, one silver-lipped and one gold-lipped, farmed in different countries and priced differently.
Sea of Cortez pearls, from Mexico, are a genuinely different animal and a genuinely separate thing, produced in tiny quantities. You will rarely be offered one.
What all four have in common
How a cultured pearl is actually made
Every one of the four begins with a small piece of mantle tissue taken from a donor mollusk and implanted into a host. That tissue forms a pearl sac, and the sac deposits nacre. It is the tissue, not the host, that decides the color and much of the character of the finished pearl, which is why farmers choose donor shells on the color of the inner rim.
In akoya, Tahitian and South Sea a round bead goes in alongside the tissue and the pearl grows as a nacre coat over it. That is what makes them round. In freshwater the tissue often goes in on its own and the pearl that grows is solid nacre with no core, though bead nucleation is used in freshwater now too.
The beads in the trays beside him are the nuclei, sorted by size. Every round akoya, Tahitian and South Sea pearl in the world started as one of those. It is skilled surgical work done by hand, one animal at a time, and a technician who is good at it is the most valuable person on a farm.
None of this is a shortcut or an imitation. A cultured pearl is a real pearl, formed by a living animal by exactly the process that forms a natural one. The only difference is whether a person started it.
Not a fifth type
Natural pearls
Natural pearls are not a type in the sense the four above are. They are pearls that formed without anyone starting them, and they come from many different mollusks, including ones that produce no nacre at all.
They are real, they are extraordinary, and we sell them. Abalone, conch and melo come to us as individual pearls, and when one is right we build a piece around it. Seed pearl strands turn up fairly regularly.
Look at the shapes. Nothing in the photograph could have been planned, and no two of them are alike. That is the whole difference between a natural pearl and a cultured one, and it is why a natural is described rather than graded.
What is scarce is a matched strand of fine round naturals. Assembling one takes decades of patient buying and a good one trades well past a million dollars. If you see one offered cheaply, something is wrong with the description.
Which one is for you?
If you are buying a first strand, freshwater or akoya. If you want something nobody else at the table is wearing, Tahitian or Fijian. If you already own pearls and want presence, South Sea.
That is the short answer, and the longer one depends on what you will actually wear. Our specialists will show you strands from any of them on camera and talk you through what you are seeing. A consultation runs up to 45 minutes and most take about twenty.
