One polished gold Mother of Pearl plate, measuring approximately 6 inches *****

One polished gold Mother of Pearl plate, measuring approximately 6 inches.

Orders usually process within 2 to 5 business days.

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Nacre also known as mother of pearl, is an organic–inorganic composite material produced by some molluscs as an inner shell layer. It is also the material of which pearls are composed. It is strong, resilient, and iridescent.

Nacre is found in some of the most ancient lineages of bivalves, gastropods, and cephalopods. The inner layer in the great majority of mollusk shells are porcellaneous, not nacreous, and this usually results in a non-iridescent shine, or more rarely in non-nacreous iridescence such as flame structure as is found in conch pearls.

The outer layer of cultured pearls and the inside layer of pearl oyster and freshwater pearl mussel shells are made of nacre. Other mollusk families that have a nacreous inner shell layer include marine gastropods such as the Haliotidae, the Trochidae and the Turbinidae.

Nacre is composed of hexagonal platelets of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate) 10–20 µm (micrometers) wide and 0.5 µm (micrometers) thick arranged in a continuous parallel lamina. Depending on the species, the shape of the tablets differs; in Pinna, the tablets are rectangular, with symmetric sectors more or less soluble(REF:Nudelman, Fabio; Gotliv, Bat Ami; Addadi, Lia; Weiner, Steve (2006). "Mollusk shell formation: Mapping the distribution of organic matrix components underlying a single aragonitic tablet in nacre". Journal of Structural Biology). Whatever the shape of the tablets, the smallest units they contain are irregular rounded granules. These layers are separated by sheets of organic matrix (interfaces) composed of elastic biopolymers (such as chitin, lustrin and silk-like proteins).

(REF: Cuif J.P. Dauphin Y., Sorauf J.E. (2011). Biominerals and fossils through time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)