In Reply to: Pearls posted by Angee on Tuesday, 25. January 2005 at 06:38 Bali Time:
Fakes tend to look 'flat' in comparison to the real thing. There are exceptions, of course, with beautiful simulated pearls made by Swarovski and other manufacturers. Real pearls tend not to be perfect and may have bands in their nacre, bumps, ridges, or pits. They vary in size and shape from one to another. Genuine pearls may have concentric ridged circles around them, which inexperienced people may take for marks from molding of a fake (which is seen in the exact middle of all the pearls on strands of some faux pearls). Real pearls come in many shapes, but they tend not to be perfectly round, so a perfect sphere should be suspect. Expensive genuine pearls may be round, but you will have other clues to help you make a determination. Some fakes are made to look irregular, and glass pearls often have flattened ends or slightly oval shapes. In addition to visual clues, genuine pearls tend to warm to the skin much faster than glass pearls. Resin or plastic pearls tend to feel somewhat warm upon first contact.
The sun test involves taking your pearls out into the sun or holding them under very bright indoor lighting. Unless they are very expensive, genuine pearls won't be perfectly matched under the sun. You will be able to see variations in their iridescence (orient) and color. If the pearls are perfectly matched for color and overtones, they are most probably fake.
Real pearls tend to be drilled from both sides, to meet in the center. If you could see the cross section of the pearl, the hole may appear wider at the outside edge of the pearl than at the center (which can make stringing poorly-drilled pearls very challenging and is one reason many people won't restring pearls that they didn't sell). Holes of real pearls tend to be as small as possible (with some exceptions), since the weight of a pearl affects its price (more hole means less weight and lower value). Inexpensive real pearls may be lower in cost because the drill holes are not completely straight. Fake pearls often have larger, possibly straighter holes than real pearls. Some fakes are made to have smaller holes, so that they can be knotted like their genuine counterparts. Inexpensive fakes may have holes of widely variable sizes on a single strand.
The Tooth Test
Let me preface my remarks by stating an important point: This test is NOT reliable! To use the tooth test, you rub the surface of the pearl over your teeth. Supposedly a real pearl feels gritty while a faux pearl feels smooth. The premise behind the test is valid: Real pearls are made up of layers of nacre that are deposited rather like sand on a beach. The slight waves and irregularities in the nacre can produce a gritty or bumpy feeling against the teeth. On the other hand, many synthetic nacres are applied smoothly onto perfectly smooth beads. These pearls would feel smooth against the teeth. The test is pretty good for distinguishing rare natural pearls from glass pearls, but it isn't as good at identifying cultured pearls, which have fewer layers of nacre and may feel more smooth.