ORNAMENTS AND DECORATION 445
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of the neck. Frequently a festoon collar will be made up of five rows
of pearls, each of a graduated length, and pendant on each a diamond.
Recently pearls have been drilled and invisibly joined by fine platinum
links, so as to form a continuous ribbon or even a collar two inches
wide; occasionally, a Greek border or some other design, of larger
pearls or of diamonds, rubies, sapphires or other gems, is interwoven.
This constitutes a veritable, smooth pearl cloth, or pearl mesh, very
beautiful and also comfortable to wear. Indeed, a purse, measuring
five by six inches, has been made of this cloth of pearls.
Dust
pearls, too minute to drill, and numbering over 100,000 to the ounce,
were used, in the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of
the nineteenth centuries, for the embellishment of the hair-work then
so much in favor and which was placed under glass. Where foliage was
represented the leaves were made of the most minute seed-pearls,
graduated in size and set on an outline of enamel or white paint, the
pearls being cemented to the outline. This added a softness to the
hair-work and other decoration.
As
long as the pearl has been known, there has been a desire to obtain
possession of one in some of its degrees of perfection, and for this
reason many attempts have been made to prepare something that might
pass for a pearl or even suggest a pearl. Sometimes the mother-of-pearl
shell has, naturally, a protuberance, either round or pear-shaped,
which, if cut off and highly polished may resemble an imperfect pearl;
and this operation is often so cleverly performed that, at the first
glance, this object may pass for a true pearl. In Russia, and
especially in Bohemia, they have gone farther than this. They have cut
out a bit of mother-of-pearl shell, leaving a piece of the natural
shell for the top, or the part that will be visible, and rounding off
the rest of the surface so as to give it a pearly effect. These objects
are of trifling value and are used in necklaces and earrings, and in
the ornamentation of icons and miniature frames and even as beads.
Glass with either an exterior or interior coating of a nacreous
substance is sometimes made absolutely round, while at other times it
is made with many imperfections so as to resemble either a marine
baroque or a fresh-water irregular pearl. The North American Indian, as
described elsewhere, has coated little balls of clay with a powder
made from a pearl-bearing fresh-water mussel and then baked them.
