Long Freshwater and White South Pearl , 14K Rose Gold Earrings

Freshwater pearls are best known for their wide range of shapes, sizes, colours, and their attractive prices. They are produced by the Hyriopsis cumingi, Hyriopsis schlegeli, and Cristaria plicata mussels, which live in lakes and rivers in China and Japan. The mussels are grafted with pieces of mantle tissue, resulting in pearls of solid nacre. About the size of a human hand, these mussels are able to produce up to 32 pearls at a time. The cultivating of freshwater pearls is fairly simple compared to other pearls. For this reason the prices of freshwater pearls are much lower than the other kind of pearls. Their sizes range from tiny seed pearls measuring 1 or 2 mm in diameter to 15 mm.

White South Sea pearls are treasured for their luxurious size and brilliant satin luster. These valuable pearls are produced by the famous silver-lip variety of the Pinctada maxima pearl oyster, along the coasts of Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. As the rarest pearls on earth, a single strand of these magnificent gems can take many years of harvests to assemble, as each pearl must be painstakingly matched for size, roundness, colour, and quality. The size ranges from 8 mm to extremely rare 23 mm.