Pure Pearls Glossary
Biwa Pearl
A long, flat, stick-shaped freshwater pearl, originally from Lake Biwa in Japan. Now a shape name more than an origin.
Lake Biwa produced the first commercially successful tissue-nucleated freshwater pearls. Pollution ended most of that farming decades ago.
The name survived as a description of the look: elongated, flattened, often slightly curved, with strong lustre from being solid nacre.
Biwa pearls give a piece length and movement that round pearls cannot. They are a designer's shape rather than a traditionalist's.
When you are buying
If you find round strands too formal or too matronly, biwa and baroque are the shapes to look at. They read as contemporary rather than ceremonial.
Biwa and baroque pieces
25 pieces in the collection right now, from ₹3,500.
The Chandini Glow Earrings
Delicate White Flat Baroque Pearl 21Inches Long Necklace
17 Inch Long Pearl Necklace in Fresh Green Baroque Pearls
The Sunburst Earrings
Beautiful Bright Golden Colour Coin Pearl Necklace Set
Elegant Mustard Yellow Biwa Pearl 15 Inch Long Necklace
Beautiful and Stylish White Biwa Pearl Necklace set in 3 Lines
Shiny Yellow Gold Coin Pearl 19 Inch Long Necklace With Silver Finish Beads
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Baroque
Any pearl with no axis of symmetry. Once treated as a reject, now the shape most associated with contemporary pearl design.
Keshi Pearl
A pearl that forms by accident with no nucleus at all, so it is solid nacre. Irregular in shape and unusually bright.
Tissue Nucleated
Grown around a scrap of mantle tissue instead of a bead, so the pearl is solid nacre throughout. The freshwater method.
Freshwater Pearl
A pearl grown inside a mussel in a river or lake, rather than an oyster in the sea. Most pearl jewellery sold today is freshwater.
Not sure what you are being sold?
Paste any pearl description — another shop’s listing, a message from a jeweller, an old certificate — and we will break it down term by term.