Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe NEW YORK, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Queen Elizabeth I of England and Indian maharajas adored them. Elizabeth Taylor of Hollywood and Barbara Bush of the White House Bushes loved them. But you don't have to be royalty or a celebrity to loose your heart to pearls, the world's only gems produced by animals. The American Museum of Natural History is romancing the pearl with a blockbuster show simply titled "Pearls" that will be on display through April 14 then move on to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago for exhibition June 28 through Jan. 5, 2003. The Field Museum collaborated is organizing the show, the most comprehensive ever devoted to the subject. Advertisement This is the most glamorous museum show in New York at present and the only one that requires special timed ticketing for admittance. Give yourself a couple of hours to absorb all seven sections of the exhibit, which are housed in spectacular galleries shaped like interlocking circles and lighted like jewel cases at Tiffany's. Advertisement A visit provides a short course in malacology, the study of marine and freshwater mollusks that produce pearls, including oysters, mussels, clams and snails. Plenty of reading material accompanies the displays, and interactive stations supply even more information on this phylum of invertebrates, of which there are 100,000 species. Although all mollusks with shells are capable of producing pearls, only one in 10,000 of them do so. An irritant of any sort, often a parasite or a wayward food particle that becomes lodged between the shell and soft tissue, will cause the mollusk to coat it with aragonite, a crystalline form of calcium carbonate. Nacre, which gives the pearl luster, is an added layer secreted by the mollusk. Some 800 items of pearl and mother-of-pearl, taken from the lustrous inside of the mollusk shell, are on display, accounting for 500,000 individual pearls in total, counting the little seed pearls used for jewelry and adornment of fashionable gowns and ecclesiastical robes. The show encompasses every aspect of pearl usage, from covers of holy books and icons to buttons. The color of a mollusk's shell is helpful in predicting the color of any pearls inside. The blush-toned Queen Conch produces pearls that range from pale pink to deep fuchsia, and the Black Lipped Pearly Oyster makes pearls of metallic luster in black and gray tinged with violet, blue, rose and green. The Camel Conch, which is the state shell of Florida, can manufacture orange-red pearls. Advertisement Not all pearls are perfectly formed. In fact, pearls with surface irregularities are the most common and still widely used in jewelry. Grotesquely shaped pearls, taken from Abalone shells and called Baroque pearls, are treasured and often used as the basis for figurines or figural jewelry depicting dolphins, swans, insects, a Bacchus, and a fat baby in a gold filigree cradle, one of the show's most arresting exhibits. A number of fossil pearls, most of which have lost their luster, are on display, including one that is 17 million years old. The life-sized model of the largest pearl ever found, a wrinkled 14-pounder known as the Pearl of Allah, is displayed in a giant clamshell from Sumatra that could have produced it. From fossils, the show jumps forward to video displays of the latest methods of producing cultured pearls by inserting an irritant -- usually a nacre bead from Mississippi-bred mussels -- into the animal, an art perfected in Japan in the last century by Kokichi Mikimoto. The mollusks are then placed in baskets and suspended in seawater from bamboo racks at coastal "pearl farms" where the pearls grow for later harvest. Also displayed are traditional method of diving for pearl mollusks, still being used with the aid of oxygen tanks in the Pacific and Indian oceans, and a model of pearling boats used off Australia that drag divers behind them to literally comb the ocean floor for mollusks with natural pearls, still the most valuable in the jewel market. Advertisement The use of pearls for adornment began in the Neolithic Age, which started some 10,000 years ago, a time when plants and animals were first domesticated. The madness for pearls originated in the Middle East and spread to the Roman world, where Emperor Caligula decorated his horse with pearl jewelry. Pearl necklaces from the Ohio Mound Builders culture of the Hopewell Indians date back to 200 B.C. All this scientific and historic information is nicely balanced by exhibits of aesthetic interest primarily designed for visual pleasure. These include portraits of Queen Elizabeth I -- who got her pearls from English pirates raiding Spanish ships -- Sir Walter Raleigh and Marie de Medici that demonstrate the use of pearls on clothing, on gloves and fans, in the hair and around the neck and wrists. More modern usages include pearl stickpins and a tiara owned by Queen Marie Antoinette and Empress Josephine, a brooch given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert, a skull cap of pearls with tasseled pendant fronted by a tiara holding a plume worn by 19th century Nepalese kings, and marvelously wrought jewelry combining Persian Gulf pearls with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, a favorite Indian jewel combination, from the royal treasuries of Hyderabad and Jaipur. Advertisement No modern jewel pearl is more famous than La Peregrina, the unique pear-shaped white pearl weighing half an ounce that has for years graced Elizabeth Taylor, a gift from husband Richard Burton. Found by a slave working the oyster beds off Panama in the 16th century, La Peregrina (The Pilgrim) was once owned by England's "Bloody" Queen Mary. It is displayed as a pendant on a breathtaking necklace of diamonds and rubies. Nearby is the single strand of sizeable cultured pearls given Marilyn Monroe by husband Joe DiMaggio, still in its original jewel case, 19th century gowns by Charles Frederick Worth dripping with appliquéd pearls and an attractive dog collar of tiny pearl strands irradiated in various shades of bronze designed only last year by Jessica Rose. A gold coffee service from Tiffany, dated 1905, is set with hundreds of pearls. The Chinese and Russians were crazy for pearls, and many objects from these cultures are on display, including a Manchu snuff bottle made of a single hollowed-out Baroque pearl and a Faberge imperial Easter egg in a bed of lilies of the valley with pearl blossoms Nicholas II gave to Empress Alexandra. Even Jewish goldsmiths used pearls on Torah pointers and circumcision knives. Advertisement Water pollution and habitat changes have made North American freshwater pearl mussels, the largest source in the world, one of the most endangered group of animals on earth, with about 35 species becoming extinct in the past 50 years. The threat of extinction is explored in depth in the exhibition. A book, "Pearls: A Natural History," has been published to accompany the show (Harry N. Abrams, 232 pages, $49.50, softcover $29.50).
