Purotu Designs' Glossary

Beadalon - A brand of stringing material that consists of a precious metal (Sterling Silver, or Gold) that is coated with nylon. It is flexible and lightweight but still sturdy and durable.

Cultured Pearl - A pearl produced by the human insertion of a bead, a tissue graft, or a bead and tissue graft in a freshwater mussel or saltwater mollusk.

Fine Silver - 99.9% pure Silver.

Freshwater Pearl - A pearl grown in a mussel in fresh water, not salt water.

Keshi Pearl - A pearl that has rejected its nucleus. These pearls are small, come in a variety of shapes, and have very high luster and rare orient due to the fact that they are 100% nacre.

Luster - The sharpness and intensity of reflections on the pearl's surface.

Mantle - An organ in the living oyster that produces nacre.

Mollusk - Defined by Merriam-Webster as any of a large phylum (Mollusca) of invertebrate animals (as snails, clams, or squids) with a soft unsegmented body usually enclosed in a calcareous shell.

Mother of Pearl - The Pinctada Margaritifera mollusk. Or also referred to specifically as, the hard pearly iridescent substance forming the inner layer of a mollusk shell.

Nacre - This can be defined as the actual Mother of Pearl itself, or the layers of mother of pearl that make up a pearl.

Natural Pearl - A pearl formed naturally in an oyster without human intervention.

Orient - The iridescent colors one sees within the pearl.

Oyster - Defined by Merriam-Webster as any of various marine bivalve mollusks (family Ostreidae) that have a rough irregular shell closed by a single adductor muscle and include commercially important shellfish b: any of various mollusks resembling or related to the oysters.

Pinctada Margaritifera - The Latin term for the Mother of Pearl, Nacre, or mollusk the Tahitian Pearl comes from.

Poe - Tahitian word for "Pearl."

Poe Rava - Tahitian word for "Black Pearl."

Purotu - Tahitian word for "Beautiful."

Sterling Silver - One of the Precious metals. Sterling is an alloy of silver containing 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% other metals, usually copper. Sterling silver is stronger than fine silver.

Tarnish - To dull or destroy luster by air, dust, or dirt.

14k Gold-fill - This a metal that consists of genuine 14k gold layered over a base metal, in this case, sterling silver. The difference between this and Gold-Plated, is that Gold-fill has a thick layer of gold, while Gold-Plate has a thin layer that eventually may wear off. Gold-fill is much higher quality than Gold-Plate.