LUSTRE OF TAHITIAN PEARLS

Lustre, the way light plays on a Tahitian pearl, is a combination of a pearl's brilliance and inner glow. Lustre or luster is one of the most important quality factors of Tahitian pearls. Their lustre spans the entire range, from high, to medium levels, to low ... yet regardless of which, one should stress lustre as one of Tahitian pearls' finest features. Looking at a natural color Tahitian pearl for the first time is truly a phenomena. Luster or the mirror-like quality of a pearl is something that difficult to describe and best done so through an analogy. Luster is the mirror like quality of a Tahitian pearl. Imagine if you are looking into a mirror and you see your reflection. But at the same time, you also see a silver sheen which is responsible for producing the mirror. This silver sheen, much like the Tahitian pearl, is also a phenomena; A fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, esp. one whose cause is in question. Then if you take this silver sheen and wrap it around a sphere that is the shape of the pearl. And then you apply a bodycolor to the pearl and it's mirror (by analogy) that is in the dark grey to black color. If you combine all these visual qualities together, one would see a sphere, a mirror wrapped around it, a black hue and finally an overtone which is the play of light that happens on the surface of a Tahitian pearl adds an additional color or orient to the surface of the pearl. There are an array of visual characteristics that make up the beauty of a Tahitian Pearl. It is always interesting to go back to other great writers who have described the magic of a pearl to understand how they used words to describe this phenomena. An interesting magical description is from John Steinbeck in his Novel The Pearl he describes luster as such It captured the light and refined it and gave it back in a silver incandescense