Making Pearls From Boiled Fish Eyes

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 87, 16 May 1949, Page 8

Making Pearls From Boiled Fish Eyes

If the head of a fish is boiled for about 20 minutes, a small white ball falls from each eye socket. When left to dry for 24 hours the spheres become very hard, but an outside white casing can be removed by gentle efforts with a pocket knife. This leaves a rather smaller, transparent round object, which can be polished by the aid of fine sandpaper, and pumice stone. A final polish can be given by placing it on a cloth and rubbing in a rotary manner with the palm of the hand. A fish-eye pearl, although transparent, is formed almost exactly in the same way as a real pearl. It consists of a series of skins or layers, one over the other down to the centre. Each layer is capable of removal. This is how real pearls are sometimes innovated and given their original lustre and beauty again. A fish-eye pearl would not have the value of a real pearl, but it is a novelty and one or more cpuld be mounted for a brooch or other ornament. Possibly bdt few people have ever seen one. The same as the real pearl, it is made of lime, and has a translucence entirely its own if sufficiently polished. The size of these pearls would vary, of course, according to the size of the fish —one from the eye of a hapuka or groper, is about the size of a pea. If anyone had the time and patience to make a graduated necklace of fish-eye pearls and kept a list of the various fish used in its construction, it probably would be unique. So far a necklace of this description is unknown.