PEARLS AND PEARL FISHERIES. 
423 
PEARLS AND PEARL-BEARING SHELLS IN ORNAMENTAL WORK. 
Efforts to make the river mussels of Germany available in ornamental work have 
met with much success. In 1850 Moritz Schmerler conceived the idea of making small 
fancy articles of the shells themselves, aud succeeded so well that the Saxon Govern- 
ment allowed him to take from the royal beds the shells he needed for his manufactur- 
ing business. Large numbers of pearl-shell pocketbooks and hand-satchels have been 
made since then. The almost faultless white and reddish tinted “rose-pearl mussels” 
are specially prized for this purpose, as the shell material may be cut so thin that a 
photograph pasted inside can be seen through the shell, conveying the appearance 
of being produced on the shell itself. Other manufacturers engaged in the busiuess, 
and many hundred thousands of the pearl mussels are now annually used at Adorf, 
where the business is chiefly carried on. The principal sources of supply are brooks 
in Bavaria and Bohemia that are owned by private persons. Here is a suggestion 
as to the possibilities of our American river shells. They are now occasionally pol- 
ished for ornaments, and, with their pearly iridescence and varied shades of white, 
cream, pink, salmon, and purple, are objects of great beauty; but thus far they are 
almost unknown aud unused in the realm of decorative art. 
Some beginnings have been made in this direction in the United States, but only 
enough to indicate how much might be done. At the Mammoth Cave, there have 
long been sold as souvenirs to visitors little pocket-books and match-safes made from 
cut and polished Unio shells from the adjacent Green River, and they are often 
exceedingly pretty articles. Very lately a leading jewelry house in New York has 
begun to use polished Unios for small jewel-cases; they are brilliantly pearly and 
when lined with velvet are well adapted for such purposes, especially as used for 
fresh-water pearl jewelry. 
In 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago, a large amount of mate- 
rial was shown, illustrating the actual and possible uses of fresh water pearls aud 
pearl shells, and especially of our own Unios. As these exhibits were scattered 
through various public and private displays in several of the buildings, it may be well 
to bring together here a brief summary of the whole. 
At the Tiffany Pavilion in the Manufactures aud Liberal Arts Building there was 
a collection illustrating the occurrence of pearls and the various pearl bearing shells 
and inollusks — notably a series of several thousand odd-shaped and curiously formed 
pearls, pearl blisters, and hinge pearls from the Unios of Wisconsin, Texas, Tennessee, 
and Ohio. In this collection were found round, oval, oblong, and mallet shaped Unio 
pearls; two pearls ingrown into one another; pearls consisting of scarcely more than 
a blister, others formed of a single nacreous layer with a central arc of clay, and 
other curious aud abnormal growths of interest to the naturalist, but of little com- 
mercial value. A silver teapot incrusted with fresh water pearls (see plate vm), and 
a watch case so thickly covered with Tennessee pearls that scarcely any mounting 
could be seen, were striking illustrations of the adaptation of these native products 
to elegant work in art. There were also exhibited Unio pearls from Weymouth, 
Nova Scotia; seven pearls from the original find made in 1856 at Notch Brook. 
