By Tara J. McKenna

Betty Sue King loves to talk about the romantic lore of the pearl. The Roman and Greek myths of Venus and Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty and pleasure – each bear a piece of what she believes the material has come to represent.

“When Venus/Aphrodite came out of the sea, she emerged from a body of pearls and as she came out of the water she shook herself,” King explained. “The water droplets that came off her body hardened into pearls and fell into the sea.”

These and other historical stories of cultured pearls are what King, affectionately known as the “Pearl Goddess and More,” shared during her March 20 lecture, “Pearls.” It was the first of a four-part series tilted “Color Perspectives.”

King described the pearl’s 55-million-year history as one filled with important figures like Queen Elizabeth I, who helped validate the importance of the material throughout the ages.

“Queen Elizabeth I was noted as the most avid pearl lover in history, bar none,” King said. “Her crown, her wig and her more than 300 pearlized gowns were all laden, set and sewn with pearls. More than simple objects of beauty, she considered pearls indispensable to her appearance of regal strength.”          

But it was a much more modern figure that helped popularize cultured pearls.

The legendary clothing designer Coco Chanel didn’t care if her pearls were natural or cultured, King said.

“Coco Chanel often wore them like costume jewelry, mixing them without any thought to whether they were faux, natural or cultured,” King said. “Thanks to Chanel, the pearl strand has defined ‘classy’ in women’s fashion.”

King, owner of pearl wholesale business Kings Ransom, has worked in the jewelry industry for more than 20 years and credits today’s vast availability of the material to the proliferation of the Chinese freshwater cultured pearls.

The first cultured pearl, however, was created by Kokichi Mikimoto in the late 1800s, when he succeeded in producing five semi-spherical cultured Akoya pearls. Their popularity has grown exponentially since then, King said.

“To understand the value of pearls is to appreciate the path of their production and the [posses a] skilled eye to judge their quality,” she said. “Pearls are universally valued for their symmetry, size, shape, luster and quality, but the cost of production varies greatly from the saltwater pearls of Australia to the abundant freshwater cultured pearls of China.

“No matter what their origin -- Tahiti, Japan, China, Phillippines, Indonesia, Australia or the U.S. -- a beautiful pearl is a treasure in every culture and language.”