Credited to Japan. Credit within Japan is shared. Mikimoto produced the first cultured hemispherical pearls in 1893, but the method that became commercially standard for round pearls was patented in 1907 by Mise and Nishikawa, and Mikimoto later bought the rights.
How it began
Kokichi Mikimoto was born in Toba in 1858. Dismayed by the quality of pearls on the market, he set out with his wife Ume to improve them. He learned that Akoya oysters produced the finest pearls and began experiments in 1888 to stimulate the formation of nacre. Some experiments were ruined by red tides that poisoned the oysters. On July 11, 1893, the first quality hemispherical pearls were removed from his Akoya oysters. He patented the process in 1896 and cultured the first fully spherical pearl in 1905.
How it works
A nucleus is placed inside a living oyster, which coats it with nacre. Mikimoto placed the bead in the mantle, where natural pearls form. The Mise-Nishikawa method, patented in 1907, placed a bead nucleus and a piece of mantle tissue in the oyster's gonad and proved more commercially viable. Early nuclei were often gold or silver beads. Mikimoto found by trial and error that round beads carved from American mussel shells made the best nuclei.
How it spread
Mikimoto opened his first boutique in Ginza in 1899, and by 1913 he had stores in major cities abroad. He showed pearl-covered centerpieces at international exhibitions from the 1910 Anglo-Japanese fair in London to the 1939 New York World's Fair. He bought the rights to the Mise-Nishikawa method and refined it. Other Japanese pearl farmers learned the techniques, and the industry later spread across the warm waters of the Pacific.
What changed first
By 1930 the price of natural pearls had been so severely affected by cultured pearls that the natural pearl market all but collapsed. Wartime disruption, the pollution of oyster beds after oil was discovered in the Persian Gulf, and the movement of workers to other industries dealt the final blow to natural pearling.
Where it stands today
Bead nuclei cut from shell remain an integral part of culturing saltwater pearls throughout the world. According to Antique Jewelry University, the leading pearl farms are in Japan, China, Australia and Thailand. Ojima, the island near Toba where Mikimoto based his work, is now known as Mikimoto Pearl Island.
