Pearls carry a bunch of symbolic weight: purity, wealth, wisdom of course, and longevity, given the time it takes to create them in nature (or at least did, before we figured out how to culture them). Ancient Greek myth foretold that pearls were tears of joy shed by the goddess Aphrodite; according to Pliny the Elder, Cleopatra once dissolved a pearl in vinegar and drank it to prove the wealth of Egypt – her action made it history’s most expensive aperitif. A couple of millennia later, thehellip;

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