Natural pearls are rarely found today and therfore command a much higher price.
Only about one in 10,000 oysters in nature will yield a pearl.
Of those, very few ever obtain a desirable size, shape and color.
In the 1800s, because of the quest to find a rare and valuable pearl,
the demand for oysters exceeded the supply and many bountiful oyster beds began to be depleted.
In the early 1900s, the Japanese discovered how to implant a oyster with a pearl nucleus to
intentionally grow a pearl - the first cultured pearls. Their technique was guarded closely yet in
1967, John Latendresse, the father of U.S. cultured freshwater pearls, developed the first
pearl farm in Camden, Tennessee and began successfully growing cultured pearls.
