Cultured Pearls

cultured pearl: The Directorate of Precious Metals and Gemstone Testing in Bahrain can produce crystal clear images but as Ali Safar says, detecting a cultured pearl is not straightforward. , according to BBC. Whereas in the past Bahraini pearl merchants such as the Al Mahmouds would have been able to spot a natural pearl just by looking at it, today s market is more complex. As Ali Safar takes a pearl out of the X-ray machine, he looks carefully at it before passing the large luminescent bead to an analyst who scrutinises it through a microscope. "Today we see cultured pearls that have virtually the same structure as a natural pearl," he explains. "The means of producing cultured pearls have become ever more sophisticated so as to mimic the real thing." (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.