Tahitian Mother-Of-Pearl

The special oyster with the tongue-twisting name (Pinctada Margaritifera) that produces today's Tahiti Cultured Pearls was first "fished" in big quantities more than 150 years ago for their mother-of-pearl , the nacreous substance that lines the inside of their shell. Sailing boats from Sydney, San Francisco and Valparaiso in Chile came to Tahiti and Her Islands to pick up supplies of the mother-of-pearl in the Tuamotu-Gambier archipelago.

The dark color of Tahitian mother-of-pearl was particularly favored by European button manufacturers and the Asian marquetry industry, which produced decorative inlaid mother-of-pearl in furniture. More than a century of primitive and dangerous work by skin-divers working without an air supply in shark-infested waters dramatically reduced the levels of wild stock.

Together with the invention of plastics, which quickly replaced mother-of-pearl in the button industry, there was a sharp decline in oyster-gathering. The growth of pearl culturing on a large scale in the 1960s, together with the development of oyster farms, gave the industry a second bound culminating with the first exportation taken place in the early 1970s. Tahiti's mother-of pearl is still used in marquetry as well as in the jewelry industry.