"Coral, elegance and
passion"

This precious stone from organic origin appears in seas and oceans creating atolls, stratums and reefs. Its colors are red, white, pink, blue and black. Savage corals are dull, and it acquires these colors being polished up. Three quarter of its world production are placed in Italy, and the rest in Japan, dark red coral is the most valuable together with the black one, another appreciate variety is a coral with pink tonality called "Angel Skin". The growth of the coral is specially slow and uninterrupted, between 0’5 and 1’5 cm each year, a reef is created over thousand years where coral subsists.

Shape

Coral Coral is an organic gem that is removed from trunks that later are sculpted to get an appropriate shape, depending on the use of the jewel. This is why coral in jewelry is found in several ways:

- Rounded: the coral is rounded and symmetrical, it rolls straight

- Baroque: this indicates an irregular shape

- Semi-rounded: rounded shape without being totally spherical.

- Semi-baroque: this is a general term that includes different shapes, as can be ‘button’, ‘pear’, ‘drop’, oval. All those that are not included in the other groups.

Color

Coral gem, composed by calcium carbonate, has different colors: red, pink and black; these exquisite colors are what made coral gem a desired object in jewelry, being the smooth pink tonality one of the most appreciate.

Quality

Coral, unlike pearls, does not have an adjustment system to determinate its quality.

A key factor in order to rate the value of Coral is its color, dark red coral is the most valuable together with black. Its characteristics also have some influence on it, as well as a perfect sculpting and the artistic value of the work.

Another essential element to rate the value of the coral gem is the size, big samples are very expensive and rare, it is also fundamental a total lack of holes.

Size

The size of coral gem is measured by its diameter in millimeters. Corals may have different sizes, as they could be sculptured with any shape. Coral is obtained through large trunks, depending on the use so the piece would be sculptured. Therefore, we can find coral pearls from 3 mm. to sculptured figures of 50 mm. or even several centimeters.

In Monperla we focus on the sizes that are the most suitable for jewelry, offering a huge range of the best quality to choose the most appropriate. So in Monperla you can find samples from 6 mm. to 20 mm. set on earrings and necklaces.

If you also want to know about different types of pearls, see the section The Pearl.