This type of culturing gives rise to a pearl which is similar to a natural pearl in that is almost solid nacre rather than mainly nucleus as in the case of the Akoya-or seawater Cultured Pearl.

For decades the Japanese produced good quality freshwater Pearls in Lake Biwa, a very large lake near Kyoto, until its demise due to pollution in the 1980’s.

Practically all freshwater pearls of a certain appearance-regardless of their true origin became known as “Biwa Pearls”. Even today this practice still continues.

The only commercially productive lake in Japan today, is Lake Kasumiga. - located north east of Tokyo. The recently introduced Kasumiga Pearls can be of fine quality with lovely pastel colours and sizes up to 16mm, with correspondingly large price tags.
Around the time Lake Biwa went into decline, freshwater pearl production in China went into overdrive.

Prior to this time China had been producing relatively low quality and poor shape Pearls often called “Iridescent Rice Crispies”. All this changed in an incredibly short period of time and today China is the biggest producer of Freshwater Pearls in the world.

With clean water, a large cheap rural work force based in central eastern China, and a huge amount of effort put into research and development, China has also brought off an amazing increase in quality, diversity of shape and colour, and most noticeably- size. Recently farmers successfully nucleated freshwater mussels and can now create pearls in a variety of shapes.

Farming in Rivers, Lakes and even irrigation channels, China has truly revolutionised the pearl market in the same way Mikimoto had done decades before. They have turned the wheel one stage further.

Freshwater Cultured Pearl

Mussel: Hyriopsis Cumingii, Hyriopsis Schlegeli, Cristaria Plicata and others.
Shapes: Very varied including: baroque Biwa, bouton, coin, drop, Keshi lozenge potato, oval rice, sausage twin and many more.
Sizes: 1.5mm to 16mm
Colours: White, pink, peach lilac, black and grey (treated)
Locations: China, Japan