Pure Pearls Glossary
Keshi Pearl
A pearl that forms by accident with no nucleus at all, so it is solid nacre. Irregular in shape and unusually bright.
Keshi pearls appear as a by-product of culturing. The oyster rejects the implanted bead but keeps coating the pearl sac, producing a pearl made entirely of nacre.
Because there is no core, keshi pearls have the highest lustre of any pearl type. They are almost never round, and that irregularity is the point.
The name is Japanese for poppy seed, from the tiny keshi that turn up in Akoya harvests. Freshwater keshi can be considerably larger.
When you are buying
Keshi are prized in astrological buying precisely because they contain no implanted bead. If solid-nacre origin matters to you, this is the type to ask for by name.
Keshi pearls
One piece in the collection right now, from ₹18,200.
Read next
Nacre
The material a pearl is made of: microscopic aragonite platelets glued in layers by conchiolin. Thickness determines both lustre and lifespan.
Baroque
Any pearl with no axis of symmetry. Once treated as a reject, now the shape most associated with contemporary pearl design.
Lustre
How sharply a pearl reflects light. The single most important quality factor, and the one you can judge without any training.
Dosham-Free Pearl
A pearl free of the specific flaws that Vedic astrology considers inauspicious — cracks, pits, spots and irregular colour.
Tissue Nucleated
Grown around a scrap of mantle tissue instead of a bead, so the pearl is solid nacre throughout. The freshwater method.
Not sure what you are being sold?
Paste any pearl description — another shop’s listing, a message from a jeweller, an old certificate — and we will break it down term by term.