IT needed an anniversary gift of a long string of cultured pearls from my husband, to trigger off a long dormant interest in that most feminine of jewels. Lustrous and beautiful, it is amazing what a string of pearls can do for one’s self esteem.

When it came to fashion, Venus seems to have favoured the frankly scanty look — remember Botticelli’s famous painting? But there was nothing sketchy about her choice of jewels — pearls. It was a wise move. Pearls are very special. Depending on which legend you believe, they epitomise a range of qualities so varied — like purity, spiritual grace, love, perfection and humility — that lesser jewels would be driven to the verge of an identity crisis.

Venus wasn’t alone in claiming rights over the pearl. Zeus, chief of the Olympian gods, is said to have created pearls by throwing a thunderbolt into a sleeping oyster. A pedigree like that goes a long way to explain the mystical quality of pearls, even when we know that gods and supernatural phenomena had little to do with their start in life. It’s still pretty special when compared with all other jewels. No long, dark years of formation in the deep coldness of a mine for a pearl and no cutting, shaping and faceting either. It has a far more gentle creation in the soft fleshy centre of an oyster.

It’s hard to tell when man discovered that foreign objects could be inserted into the shell of an oyster, but it appears that the Chinese were adept at the art as far back as the 13th century. However, it was left to the Japanese Kichimatsu Mikimoto in 1916, to perfect a commercial formula for creating a pearl that looked like a natural one and since then the pearl industry has never looked back. Cultured pearls have all the characteristic shapes, lustre and colours of their natural cousins and only an expert could tell by sight and feel if he was handing a natural or a cultured pearl.

Long before Mikimoto began to work his miracles, pearls of any size or quantity were only for the fabulously wealthy and were principally collected by the royal families around the world.

Pearls have been popular in India for centuries and were particularly favoured during the rule of the Mughals. All the Mughal emperors are invariably depicted with long strings of pearls in miniature paintings. Emperor Shah Jahan, who was extremely fond of pearls, is said to have directed the architect who designed the Taj Mahal to create a ‘perfect pearl’ as a memorial to his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal.

The city of Hyderabad has a long association with pearls, introduced into the region by Asif Jah, Aurangzeb’s viceroy who become the first Nizam-ul-Mulk. Descriptions of the exquisite pearls possessed by the Nizams are legion. Osman Ali, the richest of them all, was reputed to have had a fabulous collection of pearls, stashed away with rubies, emeralds and diamonds, in bags in the palace basement. Azim Jah, one of the more recent Nizams, is said to have presented his bride with a pearl the size of a pigeon’s egg because her name was Dur-e-Shahwar, or pearl of great price.

But it was not only the Nizams who owned fabulous pearls. The royal families of Jaipur, Gwalior and Baroda, all had their collections. The Gaekwar of Baroda is reputed to have possessed a pearl rug that was ten and a half feet long and six feet wide with some diamonds woven in for good measure. The maharanis from almost all the princely states were invariable seen in their strings of graded pearls, a style introduced by the stylish Maharani of Cooch Behar. Her daughter Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur will forever be associated with her French chiffons and the string of pearls that she continues to wear with elan.

In England the formidable Queen Mary loved pearls, and wore them with a fervour that bordered on blanket coverage rather than careful selection. The earlier Tudor royals used pearls on their clothes, their ruffs, their hair, and of course as jewellery. In addition to all the pearls at the English coffers, Mary Tudor was the proud, if short-lived, owner of the fabulous La Peregrina pearl. This famous jewel now belongs to film star Elizabeth Taylor. Another Mary, the ill-advised Mary Queen of Scots showed her style in her jewellery too. Amongst her collection of pearls were some that were very suitably black.

Pearls have remained among the most important items of jewellery in the West and till very recently, a string of pearls was the most popular ‘coming of age’ gift for a daughter, or a grand- daughter. Astrologically used in India, they are said to have a calming effect on the wearer, and reduce blood pressure.

While pearls are no longer restricted to those with a treasury or two to dip into, the high quality ones, both natural and cultured, are still for the seriously rich. Cultured pearls, no less than real ones, rely on the whims of nature. It is, after all, a natural process that has just been helped along a little by man. So, there is no guarantee that the bead inserted into the oyster will, when harvested, be a pearl of quality — or indeed a pearl at all.