Mother-of-pearl is the hard, silvery, internal layer of several kinds of shells, especially oysters, the large varieties of which in the Indian Seas secrete this coat of sufficient thickness to ...

Pearls are made by marine oysters and freshwater mussels as a natural defence against an irritant such as a parasite entering their shell or damage to their fragile body. The oyster or mussel slowly ...

Watch Andreia Salvador, Curator of Marine Mollusca, take a look at one of the Museum's most extraordinary and precious pearls. Among the millions of bivalve molluscs in the Museum's collections, one ...

Most pearls come from oysters, which thrive in both freshwater and saltwater environments. Oysters are bivalves that means their shell is composed of two valves connected by an elastic ligament.

Oyster shells are bulky and plain, but the treasures they hold go beyond their tasty meat and beautiful pearls. One company in Hong Kong is turning them into materials for constructing buildings.